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CONSIDERATIONS 



ON 




REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 



'7m 



BY 



JOHN STUART MILL. 



ATJTHOE OF 



A SYSTEM OF LOGIC, EATIOCINATIVE AND INDUCTIVE; 



NEW YORK: 
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

FEANKLIN SQUAEE. 

18 7 3. 



^^v 



. ^^ 






CONSIDERATIONS 



ON 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 



i. . 



»\ 



PREFACE. 



Those who have done me the honor of reading my 
previous writings will probably receive no strong im- 
pression of novelty from the present volume ; for the 
principles are those to which I have been working 
up during the greater part of my life, and most of the 
practical suggestions have been anticipated by others 
or by myself. There is novelty, however, in the fact 
of bringing them together, and exhibiting them in 
their connection, and also, I believe, in much that is 
brought forward in their support. Several of the 
opinions, at all events, if not new, are for the present 
as little likely to meet with general acceptance as if 
they were. 

It seems to me, however, from various indications, 
and from . none more than the recent debates on Ee- 
form of Parliament, that both Conservatives and Lib- 
erals (if I may continue to call them what they still 
call themselves) have lost confidence in the political 
creeds which they nominally profess, while neither 
side appears to have made any progress in providing 
itself with a better. Yet such a better doctrine must 
be possible ; not a mere compromise, by splitting the 
difference between the two, but something wider than 
either, which, in virtue of its superior comprehensive- 



VI PREFACE. 

ness, might be adopted by either Liberal or Conserva- 
tive without renouncing any thing which he really 
feels to be valuable in his own creed. When so many 
feel obscurely the want of such a doctrine, and so few 
even flatter themselves that they have attained it, any 
one may, without presumption, offer what his own 
thoughts, and" the best that he knows of those of oth- 
ers, are able to contribute toward its formation. 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGB 
TO WHAT EXTENT FORMS OP GOVERNMENT ARE A MATTER OF 

CHOICE 9 

CHAPTER II. 

THE CRITERION OP A GOOD FORM OP GOVERNMENT 26 

CHAPTER III. 

THAT THE IDEALLY BEST FORM OF GOVERNMENT IS REPRE- 
SENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 55 

CHAPTER IV. 

UNDER WHAT SOCIAL CONDITIONS REPRESENTATIVE GOVERN- 
MENT IS INAPPLICABLE 81 

CHAPTER V. 

OP THE PROPER FUNCTIONS OF REPRESENTATIVE BODIES 97 

CHAPTER VI. 

OF THE INFIRMITIES AND DANGERS TO WHICH REPRESENTA- 
TIVE GOVERNMENT IS LIABLE 120 

CHAPTER VII. 

OF TRUE AND FALSE DEMOCRACY; REPRESENTATION OF ALL, 

AND REPRESENTATION OF THE MAJORITY ONLY 144 

CHAPTER VIII. 

OF THE EXTENSION OF THE SUFFRAGE 169 

CHAPTER IX. 

SHOULD THERE BE TWO STAGES OF ELECTION? 196 



VUl CONTENTS. . 

CHAPTER X. 

PAGB 
OF THE MODE OF VOTING < 205 

CHAPTER XI. 

OF THE DURATION OF PARLIAMENTS 229 

CHAPTER XII. 

OUGHT PLEDGES TO BE REQUIRED FROM MEMBERS OF PAR- 
LIAMENT ? 233 

CHAPTER XIII. 

OF A SECOND CHAMBER 249 

CHAPTER XIV- 

OF THE EXECUTIVE IN A REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 261' 

CHAPTER XV. 

OF LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE BODIES 286 

CHAPTER XVI. 

OF NATIONALITY AS CONNECTED WITH REPRESENTATIVE GOV- 
ERNMENT 308 

CHAPTER XVII. 

OF FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS = 320 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

OF THE GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES BY A FREE STATE,.,,. 336 



/ 



CONSIDERATIONS 



ON 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 



CHAPTER I. 

TO WHAT EXTENT FORMS OF GOVERNMENT ARE A 
♦ MATTER OF CHOICE. 

All speculations concerning forms of government 
bear the impress, more or less exclusive, of two con- 
flicting theories respecting political institutions ; or, 
to speak more properly, conflicting conceptions of 
what political institutions are. 

By some minds, government is conceived as strict- 
ly a practical art, giving rise to no questions but those 
of means and an end. Forms of government are as- 
similated to any other expedients for the attainment 
of human objects. They are regarded as wholly an 
affair of invention and contrivance. Being made by 
man, it is assumed that man has the choice either to 
make them or not, and how or on what pattern they 
shall be made. Government, according to this con- 
ception, is a problem, to be worked like any other 
question of business. The first step is to define the 
A2 



10 FORMS OF GOVERNMENT 

purposes which governments are required to promote. 
The next is to inquire what form of government is 
best fitted to fulfill those purposes. Having satisfied 
ourselves on these two points, and ascertained the 
form of government which combines the greatest 
amount of good with the least of evil, what further 
remains is to obtain the concurrence of our country- 
men, or those for whom the institutions are intended, 
in the opinion which we have privately arrived at. 
To find the best form of government; to persuade 
others that it is the best ; and, having done so, to stir 
them up to insist on having it, is the order of ideas 
in the minds of those who adopt this view of political 
philosophy. They look upon a constitution in the 
same light (difference of scale being allowed for) as 
they would upon a steam plow or a threshing ma- 
chine. 

To these stand opposed another kind of political 
reasoners, who are so far from assimilating a form of 
government to a machine that they regard it as a sort 
of spontaneous product, and the science of govern- 
ment as a branch (so to speak) of natural history. 
According to them, forms of government are not a 
matter of choice. We must take them, in the main, 
as we find them. Governments can not be construct- 
ed by premeditated design. They "are not made, 
but grow." Our business with them, as with the oth- 
er facts of the universe, is to acquaint ourselves with 
their natural properties, and adapt ourselves to them. 
The fundamental political institutions of a people are 
considered by this school as a sort of organic growth 



HOW FAR A MATTER OF CHOICE. 11 

from the nature and life of that people ; a product of 
their habits, instincts, and unconscious wants and de- 
sires, scarcely at all of their deliberate purposes. 
Their will has had no part in the matter but that of 
meeting the necessities of the moment by the contriv- 
ances of the moment, which contrivances, if in suf- 
ficient conformity to the national feelings and char- 
acter, commonly last, and, by successive aggregation, 
constitute a polity suited to the people who possess 
it, but which it would be vain to attempt to superin- 
duce upon any people whose nature and circumstances 
had not spontaneously evolved it. 

It is difficult to decide which of these doctrines 
would be the most absurd, if we could suppose either 
of them held as an exclusive theory. But the princi- 
ples which men profess on any controverted subject 
are usually a very imperfect exponent of the opinions 
they really hold. No one believes that every peo- 
ple is capable of working every sort of institution. 
Carry the analogy of mechanical contrivances as far 
as we will, a man does not choose even an instrument 
of timber and iron on the sole ground that it is in it- 
self the best. He considers whether he possesses the 
other requisites which must be combined with it to 
render its employment advantageous, and, in particu- 
lar, whether those by whom it will have to be work- 
ed possess the knowledge and skill necessary for its 
management. On the other hand, neither are those 
who speak of institutions as if they were a kind of 
living organisms really the political fatalists they 
give themselves gut to be. They do not pretend that 



12 FORMS OF GOVERNMENT 

mankind have absolutely no range of choice as to. the 
government they will live under, or that a considera- 
tion of the consequences which flow from different 
forms of polity is no element at all in deciding which 
of them should be preferred. But, though each side 
greatly exaggerates its own theorj^, out of opposition 
to the other, and no one holds without modification 
to either, the two doctrines correspond to a deep-seat- 
ed difference between two modes of thought ; and 
though it is evident that neither of these is entirely 
in the right, yet it being equally evident that neither 
is wholly in the wrong, we must endeavor to get 
down to what is at the root of each, and avail our- 
selves of the amount of truth which exists in either. 

Let us remember, then, in the first place, that polit- 
ical institutions (however the proposition may be at 
times ignored) are the work of men — owe their origin 
and their whole existence to human will. Men did 
not wake on a summer morning and find them sprung 
up. Neither do they resemble trees, which, once 
planted, ''are aye growing" while men "are sleep- 
ing." In every stage of their existence they are made 
what they are by human voluntary agency. Like all 
things, therefore, which are made by men, they may 
be either well or ill made; judgment and skill may 
have been exercised in their production, or the re- 
verse of these. And again, if a people have omitted, 
or from outward pressure have not had it in their 
power to give themselves a constitution by the tenta- 
tive process of applying a corrective to each evil as it 
arose, or as the sufferers gained strength to resist it, 



HOW FAR A MATTER OF CHOICE. 13 

this retardation of political progress is no doubt a 
great disadvantage to them, but it does not prove that 
what has been found good for others would not have 
been good also for them, and will not be so still when 
they think fit to adopt it. 

On the other hand, it is also to be borne in mind 
that political machinery does not act of itself. As it 
is first made, so it has to be worked, by men, and 
even by ordinary men. It needs, not their simple ac- 
quiescence, but their active participation, and must be 
adjusted to the capacities and qualities of such men 
as are available. This implies three conditions. The 
people for whom the form of government is intended 
must be willing to accept it, or, at least, not so unwill- 
ing as to oppose an insurmountable obstacle to its 
establishment. They must be willing and able to do 
what is necessary to keep it standing. And they 
must be willing and able to do what it requires of 
them to enable it to fulfill its purposes. The word 
"do" must be understood as including forbearances as 
well as acts. They must be capable of fulfilling the 
conditions of action and the conditions of self-restraint, 
which are necessary either for keeping the establish- 
ed polity in existence, or for enabling it to achieve 
the ends, its conduciveness to which forms its recom- 
mendation. 

The failure of any of these conditions renders a 
form of government, whatever favorable promise it 
may otherwise hold out, unsuitable to the particular 
case. 

The first obstacle, the repugnance of the people to 



14 FOKMS OF GOVERNMENT 

the particular form of government, needs little illus- 
tration, because it never can in theory have been over- 
looked. The case is of perpetual occurrence. JSToth- 
ing but foreign force would induce a tribe of North 
American Indians to submit to the restraints of a reg- 
ular and civihzed government. The same might have 
been said, though somewhat less absolutely, of the 
barbarians who overran the Eoman Empire. It re- 
quired centuries of time and an entire change of cir- 
cumstances to discipline them into regtilar obedience 
even to their own leaders, when not actually serving 
under their banner. There are nations who will not 
voluntarily submit to any government but that of cer- 
tain families, which have from time immemorial had 
the privilege of supplying them with chiefs. Some 
nations could not, except by foreign conquest, be made 
to endure a monarchy ; others are equally averse to a 
republic. The hinderance often amounts, for the time 
being, to impracticability. 

^ But there are also cases in which, though not averse 
to a form of government — possibly even desiring it — 
a people may be unwilling or unable to fulfill its con- 

^ ditions. They may be incapable of fulfilling such of 
. ,them as are necessary to keep the government even 

'«/( in nominal existence. Thus a people may prefer a 
free government; but if, from indolence, or careless- 
ness, or cowardice, or want of pubHc spirit, they are 
unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it ; 
if they will not fight for it when it is directly attack- 
ed ; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to 
cheat them out of it; if, by momentary discourage- 



HOW FAR A MATTER OF CHOICE. 15 

ment, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for 
an individual, they can be induced to lay their liber- 
ties at the feet even of a great man, or trust him with 
powers which enable him to subvert their institutions 
— in all these cases they are more or less unfit for lib- 
erty ; and though it may be for their good to have 
had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to 
enjoy it. Again, a people may be unwilling or un- 
able to fulfill the duties which a particular form of 
government requires of them. A rude people, though 
in some degree alive to the benefits of civilized socie- 
ty, may be unable to practice the forbearances which 
it demands ; their passions may be too violent, or their 
personal pride too exacting, to forego private conflict, 
and leave to the laws the avenging of their real or 
supposed wrongs. In such a case, a civilized govern- 
ment, to be really advantageous to them, will require 
to be in a considerable degree despotic ; one over 
which they do not themselves exercise control, and 
which imposes a great amount of forcible restraint 
upon their actions. Again, a people must be consid- 
ered unfit for more than a limited and qualified free- 
dom who will not co-operate actively with the law 
and the public authorities in the repression of evil- 
doers. A people who are more disposed to shelter a 
criminal than to apprehend him ; who, like the Hin- 
doos, will perjure themselves to screen the man who 
has robbed them, rather than take trouble or expose 
themselves to vindictiveness by giving evidence 
against him ; who, like some nations of Europe down 
to a recent date, if a man poniards another in the 



16 FOKMS OF GOVEKNMENT 

public street, pass by on the other side, because it is 
the business of the police to look to the matter, and it 
is safer not to interfere in what does not concern them ; 
a people who are revolted by an execution, but not 
shocked at an assassination, require that the public 
authorities should be armed with much sterner powers 
of repression than elsewhere, since the first indispens- 
able requisites of civilized life have nothing else to 
rest on. These deplorable states of feeling, in any 
people who have emerged from savage life, are, no 
doubt, -usually the consequence of previous bad gov- 
ernment, which has taught them to regard the law as 
made for other ends than their good, and its adminis- 
trators as worse enemies than those who openly vio- 
late it. But, however little blame may be due to 
those in whom these mental habits have grov/n np, 
and however the habits may be ultimately conquera- 
ble by better government, yet, while they exist, a peo- 
ple so disposed can not be governed with as little 
power exercised over them as a people whose sympa- 
thies are on the side of tht law, and who are willing 
to give active assistance in its enforcement. Again, 
representative institutions are of little value, and may 
be a mere instrument of tyranny or intrigue, when the 
generality of electors are not sufficiently interested in 
their own government to give their vote, or^if they 
vote at all, do not bestow their suffrages on public 
grounds, but sell them for money, or vote at the beck 
of some one who has control over them, or whom, for 
private reasons, they desire to propitiate. Popular 
election thus practised, instead of a security against 



HOW FAR A MATTER OF CHOICE. 17 

misgovernment, is but an additional wheel in its ma- 
chinery. Besides these moral hinderances, mechanic- 
al difficulties are often an insuperable impediment to 
forms of government. In the ancient world, though 
there might be, and often was, great individual inde- 
pendence, there could be nothing like a regulated pop- 
ular government beyond the bounds of a single city 
community, because there did not exist the physical 
conditions for the formation and propagation of a 
public opinion except among those who could be 
brought together to discuss public matters in the same 
agora. This obstacle is generally thought to have 
ceased by the adoption of the representative system. 
But to surmount it completely required the press, and 
even the newspaper press, the real equivalent, though 
not, in all respects, an adequate one, of the Pnyx and 
the Forum. There have been states of society in 
which even a monarchy of any great tenitorial extent 
could not subsist, but unavoidably broke up into pet- 
ty principalities, either mutually independent, or held 
together by a loose tie like the feudal, because the 
machinery of authority was not perfect enough to 
carry orders , into effect at a great distance from the 
person of the ruler. He depended mainly upon vol- 
untary fidelity for the obedience even of his army, 
nor did there exist the means of making the people 
pay an amount of taxes sufficient for keeping up the 
force necessary to compel obedience throughout a 
large territory. In these and all similar cases, it must 
be understood that the amount of the hinderance may 
be either greater or less. It may be so great as to 



18 FORMS OF GOVERNMENT 

make tlie form of government work very ill, without 
absolutely precluding its existence, or hindering it 
from being practically preferable to any other which 
can be had. This last question mainly depends upon 
a consideration which we have not yet arrived at — 
the tendencies of different forms of government to 
promote Progress. 

We have now examined the three fundamental con- 
ditions of the adaptation of forms of government to 
the people who are to be governed by them. If the 
supporters of what may be termed the naturalistic 
theory of politics mean but to insist on the necessity 
of these three conditions ; if they only mean that no 
government can permanently exist which does not ful- 
fill the first and second conditions, and, in some con- 
siderable measure, the third, their doctrine, thus lim- 
ited, is incontestable. Whatever they mean more than 
this appears to me altogether untenable. All that we 
are told about the necessity of an historical basis for 
institutions, of their being in harmony with the na- 
tional usages and character, and the like, means either 
this, or nothing to the purpose. There is a great quan- 
tity of mere sentimentality connected with these and 
similar phrases, over and above the amount of ration- 
al meaning contained in them. But, considered prac- 
tically, these alleged requisites of political institutions 
are merely so many facilities for realizing the three 
conditions. When an institution, or set of institutions, 
has the way prepared for it by the opinions, tastes, 
and habits of the people, they are not only more eas- 
ily induced to accept it, but will more easily learn. 



HOW FAR A MATTER OF CHOICE. 19 

and will be, from the beginning, better disposed to do 
what is required of them both for the preservation of 
the institutions, and for bringing them into such ac- 
tion as enables them to produce their best results. It 
would be a great mistake in any legislator not to shape 
his measures so as to take advantage of such pre-ex- 
isting habits and feelings, when available. On the 
other hand, it is an exaggeration to elevate these mere 
aids and facilities into necessary conditions. People 
are more easily induced to do, and do more easily, 
what they are already used to ; but people also learn 
to do things new to them. Familiarity is a great 
help ; but much dwelling on an idea will make it fa- 
miliar, even when strange at first. There are abund- 
ant instances in which a whole people have been eager 
for untried things. The amount of capacity which 
a people possess for doing new things, and adapting 
themselves to new circumstances, is itself one of the 
elements of the question. It is a quality in which 
different nations and different stages of civilization 
differ much from one another. The capability of any 
given people for fulfilling the conditions of a given 
form of government can not be pronounced on by any 
sweeping rule. Knowledge of the particular people, 
and general practical judgment and sagacity, must be 
the guides. There is also another consideration not 
to be lost sight of. A people may be unprepared for 
good institutions ; but to kindle a desire for them is 
a necessary part of the preparation. To recommend 
and advocate a particular institution or form of gov- 
ernment, and set its advantages in the strongest light, 



20 FORMS OF GOVERNMENT 

is one of the modes, often the only mode within reach, 
of educating the mind of the nation, not only for ac- 
cepting or claiming, but also for working the institu- 
tion. What means had Italian patriots, during the 
last and present generation, of preparing the Italian 
people for freedom in unity, but by inciting them to 
demand it ? Those, however, who undertake such a 
task, need to be duly impressed, not solely with the 
benefits of the institution or polity which they recom- 
mend, but also with the capacities, moral, intellectual, 
and active, required for working it, that they may 
avoid, if possible, stirring up a desire too much in ad- 
vance of the capacity. 

The result of what has been said is that, within the 
limits set by the three conditions so often adverted to, 
institutions and forms of government are a matter of 
choice. To inquire into the best form of government 
in the abstract (as it is called) is not a chimerical, but 
a highly practical employment of scientific intellect ; 
and to introduce into any country the best institu- 
tions which, in the existing state of that country, are 
capable of, in any tolerable degree, fulfilling the con- 
ditions, is one of the most rational objects to which 
practical effort can address itself. Every thing which 
can be said by way of disparaging the efiicacy of hu- 
man will and purpose in matters of government might 
be said of it in every other of its applications. In all 
things there are very strict limits to human power. 
It can only act by wielding some one or more of the 
forces of nature. Forces, therefore, that can be ap- 
plied to the desired use, must exist, and will only act 



HOW FAR A MATTER OF CHOICE. 21 

according to their own laws. We can not make the 
river run backward, but we do not therefore say that 
water-mills " are not made, but grow." In politics as 
in mechanics, the power which is to keep the engine 
going must be sought for outside the machinery ; and 
if it is not forthcoming, or is insufficient to surmount 
the obstacles which may reasonably be expected, the 
contrivance will fail. This is no peculiarity of the 
political art, and amounts only to saying that it is 
subject to the same limitations and conditions as all 
other arts. 

At this point we are met by another objection, or 
the same objection in a different form. The forces, it 
is contended, on which the greater political phenome- 
na depend, are not amenable to the direction of politi- 
cians or philosophers. The government of a country, 
it is affirmed, is, in all substantial respects, fixed and 
determined beforehand by the state of the country in 
regard to the distribution of the, elements of social 
power. Whatever is the strongest power in society 
will obtain the governing authority ; and a change in 
the political constitution can not be durable unless 
preceded or accompanied by an altered distribution 
of power in society itself. A nation, therefore, can 
not choose its form of government. The mere details 
and practical organization it may choose, but the es- 
sence of the whole, the seat of the supreme power, is 
determined for it by social circumstances. 

That there is a portion of truth in this doctrine I 
at once admit, but, to make it of any use, it must be 
reduced to a distinct expression and proper limits. 



22 FORMS OF GOVERNMENT 

"When it is said that the strongest power in society 
will make itself strongest in the government, what is 
meant by power ? JSTot thews and sinews ; otherwise 
pure democracy would be the only form of polity that 
could exist. To mere muscular strength add two 
other elements, property and intelligence, and we are 
nearer the truth, but far from having yet reached it. 
JSTot only is a greater number often kept down by a 
less, but the greater number may have a preponder- 
ance in property, and individually in intelligence, and 
may yet be held in subjection, forcible or otherwise, 
by a minority in both respects inferior to it. To make 
these various elements ofpower politically influential, 
they must be organized ; and the advantage in organ- 
isation is necessarily with those who are in possession 
of the government. A much weaker party in all oth- 
er elements of power may greatly preponderate when 
the powers of government are thrown into the scale, 
and may long retain its predominance through this 
alone ; though, no doubt, a government so situated is 
in the condition called in mechanics unstable equilib- 
rium, like a thing balanced on its smaller end, which, 
if once disturbed, tends more and more to depart from, 
instead of reverting to, its previous state. 

But there are still stronger objections to this theory 
of government in the terms in which it is usually 
stated. The power in society which has any tenden- 
cy to convert itself into political power is not power 
quiescent, power merely passive, but active power ; in 
other words, power actually exerted ; that is to say, a 
very small portion of all the power in existence. Po- 



HOW FAR A MATTER OF CHOICE. 23 

litically speaking, a great part of all power consists in 
will. How is it possible, then, to compute the ele- 
ments of political power, while we omit from the com- 
putation any thing which acts on the will ? To think 
that, because those who wield the power in society 
wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of 
no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the 
government by acting on opinion, is to forget that 
opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces. 
One person with a belief is a social power equal to 
ninety-nine who have only interests. They who can 
succeed in creating a general persuasion that a certain 
form of government, or social fact of any kind, de- 
serves to be preferred, have made nearly the most im- 
portant step which can possibly be taken toward rang- 
ing the powers of society on its side. On the day 
when the protomartyr was stoned to death at Jerusa- 
lem, while he who was to be the Apostle of the Gren- 
tiles stood by '' consenting unto his death," would any 
one have supposed that the party of that stoned man 
were then and there the strongest power in society ? 
And has not the event proved that they were so? 
Because theirs was the most powerful of then existing 
beliefs. The same element made a monk of Witten- 
berg, at the meeting of the Diet of Worms, a more 
powerful social force than the Emperor Charles the 
Fifth, and all the princes there assembled. But these, 
it may be said, are cases in which religion was con- 
cerned, and religious convictions are something pecul- 
iar in their strength. Then let us take a case purely 
political, where religion, if concerned at all, was chief- 



24 FORMS OF GOVERNMENT 

ly oa the losing side. If any one requires to be con- 
vinced that speculative thought is one of the chief el- 
ements of social power, let him bethink himself of the 
age in which there was scarcely a throne in Europe 
which was not filled by a liberal and reforming king, 
a liberal and reforming emperoi^, or, strangest of all, a 
liberal and reforming pope; the age of Frederick the 
Great, of Catharine the Second, of Joseph the Second, 
of Peter Leopold, of Benedict XIY., of Granganelli, of 
Pombal, of D'Aranda; when the very Bourbons of 
Naples were liberals a^nd reformers, and all the active 
minds among the noblesse of France were filled with 
the ideas which were soon after to cost them so dear. 
Surely a conclusive example how far mere physical 
and economic power is from being the whole of social 
power. It was not by any change in the distribution 
of material interests, but by the spread of moral con- 
victions, that negro slavery has been put an end to in 
the British Empire and elsewhere. The serfs in Eus- 
sia will owe their emancipation, if not to a sentiment 
of duty, at least to the growth of a more enlightened 
opinion respecting the true interest of the state. It is- 
what men think that determines how they act; and 
though the persuasions and convictions of average 
men are in a much greater degree determined by their 
personal position than by reason, no little power is 
exercised over them by the persuasions and convic- 
tions of those whose personal position is different, and 
by the united authority of the instructed. When, 
therefore, the instructed in general can be brought to 
recognize one social arrangement, or political or other 



HOW FAR A MATTER OF CHOICE. 25 

institution, as good, and another as bad — one as desir- 
able, another as condemnable, very much has been 
done toward giving to the one, or withdrawing from 
the other, that preponderance of social force which 
enables it to subsist. And the maxim that the gov- 
ernment of a country is what the social forces in ex- 
istence compel it to be, is true only in the sense in 
which it favors, instead of discouraging, the attempt 
to exercise, among all forms of government practicable 
in t|ie existing condition of socictv, a rational choice. 



26 CKITERION OF A GOOD 



CHAPTER II. 

THE CRITERION OF A GOOD FORM OF GOVERNMENT. 

The form of government for any given country 
being (within certain definite conditions) amenable to 
choice, it is now to be considered by what test the 
choice should be directed; what are the distinctive 
characteristics of the form of government best fitted 
to promote the interests of any given society. 

Before entering into this inquiry, it may seem nec- 
essary to decide what are the proper functions of gov- 
ernment ; for, government altogether being only a 
means, the eligibility of the means must depend on 
their adaptation to the end. But this mode of stating 
the problem gives less aid to its investigation than 
might be supposed, and does not even bring the whole 
of the question into view. For, in the first place, the 
proper functions of a government are not a fixed 
thing, but diiferent in different states of society ; much 
more extensive in a backward than in an advanced 
state. And, secondly, the character of a government 
or set of political institutions can not be sufficiently 
estimated while we confine our attention to the legiti- 
mate sphere of governmental functions; for, though 
the goodness of a government is necessarily circum- 
scribed within that sphere, its badness unhappily is 
not. Every kind and degree of evil of which man- 



FORM OF GOVERNMENT. 27 

'kind are susceptible may be inflicted on them by their 
government, and none of the good which social ex- 
istence is capable of can be any farther realized than 
as the constitution of the government is compatible 
with, and allows scope for, its attainment. Not to 
speak of indirect effects, the direct meddling of the 
public authorities has' no necessary limits but those 
of human life, and the influence of government on 
the well-being of society can be considered or estima- 
ted in reference to nothing less than the whole of the 
interests of humanity. 

Being thus obliged to place before ourselves, as the 
test of good and bad government, so complex an ob- 
ject as the aggregate interests of society, we would 
willingly attempt some kind of classification of those 
interests which, bringing them before the mind in defi- 
nite groups, might give indication of the qualities by 
which a form of government is fitted to promote those 
various interests respectively. It would be a great 
facility if we could say the good of society consists of 
such and such elements; one of these elements re- 
quires such conditions, another such others ; the gov- 
ernment, then, which unites in the greatest degree all 
these conditions, must be the best. The theory of 
government would thus be built up from the separate 
theorems of the elements which compose a good state 
of society. 

Unfortunately, to enumerate and classify the con- 
stituents of social well-being so as to admit of the 
formation of such theorems is no easy task. Most of 
those who, in the last or present generation, have ap- 



28 CRITERION OF A GOOD 

plied themselves to the philosophy of politics in anj^ 
comprehensive spirit, have felt the importance of such 
a classification, but the attempts which have been 
made toward it are as yet limited, so far as I am aware, 
to a single step. The classification begins and ends 
with a partition of the exigencies of society between 
the two heads of Order and Progress (in the phrase- 
ology of French thinkers) ; Permanence and Pro- 
gression, in the words of Coleridge. This division is 
plausible and seductive, from the apparently clean-cut 
opposition between its two members, and the remark- 
able difference between the sentiments to which they 
appeal. But I apprehend that (however admissible 
for purposes of popular discourse) the distinction be- 
tween Order, or Permanence and Progress, employed 
to define the qualities necessary in a government, is 
unscientific and incorrect. 

For, first, what are Order and Progress ? Concern- 
ing Progress there is no difficulty, or none which is 
apparent at first sight. When Progress is spoken of 
as one of the wants of human society, it may be sup- 
posed to mean Improvement. That is a tolerably 
distinct idea. But what is Order? Sometimes it 
means more, sometimes less, but hardly ever the whole 
of what human society needs except improvement. 

In its narrowest acceptation, Order means Obedi- 
ence. A government is said to preserve order if it 
succeeds in getting itself obeyed. But there are dif- 
ferent degrees of obedience, and it is not every degree 
that is commendable. Only an unmitigated despo- 
tism demands that the individual citizen shall obey 



FORM OF GOVERNMENT. 29 

unconditionally every mandate of persons in author- 
ity. We must at least limit the definition to such 
mandates as are general, and issued in the deliberate 
form of laws. Order, thus understood, expresses, 
doubtless, an indispensable attribute of government. 
Those who are unable to make their ordinances obey- 
ed can not be said to govern. But, though a neces- 
sary condition, this is not tlie object of government. 
That it should make itself obeyed is requisite, in or- 
der that it may accomplish some other purpose. We 
are still to seek what is this other purpose which gov- 
ernment ought to fulfill abstractedly from the idea of 
improvement, and which has to be fulfilled in every 
society, whether stationary or progressive. 

In a sense somewhat more enlarged, Order means 
the preservation of peace by the cessation of private 
violence. Order i,s said to exist where the people of 
the country have, as a general rule, censed to prose- 
cute their quarrels by private force, and acquired the 
habit of referring the decision of their disputes and 
the redress of their injuries to the public authorities. 
But in this larger use of the term, as well as in the 
former narrow one. Order expresses rather one of the 
conditions of government than either its purpose or 
the criterion of its excellence ; for the habit may be 
well established of submitting to the government, and 
referring all disputed matters to its authority, and yet 
the manner in which the government deals with those 
disputed matters, and with the other things about 
which it concerns itself, may differ by the whole in- 
terval which divides the best from the worst possible. 



30 CRITERION OF A GOOD 

If we intend to comprise in the idea of Order all 
tliat society requires from its government wliich is 
not included m the idea of Progress, we must define 
Order as the preservation of all kinds and amounts 
of good which already exist, and Progress as consist- 
ing in the increase of them. This distinction does 
comprehend in one or the other section every thing 
which a government can be required to promote. 
But, thus understood, it affords no basis for a philoso- 
phy of government. We can not say that, in consti- 
tuting a polity, certain provisions ought to be made 
for Order and certain others for Progress, since the 
conditions of Order, in the sense now indicated, and 
those of Progress, are not opposite, but the same. The 
agencies which tend to preserve the social good which 
already exists are the very same which promote the 
increase of it, and vice versa, the sole difference being 
that a greater degree of those agencies is required for 
the latter purpose than for the former. 

What, for example, are the qualities in the citizens 
individually, which conduce most to keep up the 
amount of good conduct, of good management, of suc- 
cess and prosperity, which already exist in society ? 
Every body will agree that those qualities are indus- 
try, integrity, justice, and prudence. JBnt are not these, 
of all qualities, the most conducive to improvement ? 
and is not any growth of these virtues in the com- 
munity in itself the greatest of improvements ? If so, 
whatever qualities in the government are promotive 
of industry, integrity, justice, and prudence, conduce 
alike to permanence and to progression, only there is 



FORM OF GOVERNMENT. 31 

needed more of those qualities to make the society de- 
cidedly progressive than merely to keep it permanent. 

What, again, are the particular attributes in human 
beings which seem to have a more especial reference 
to Progress, and do not so directly suggest the ideas 
of Order and Preservation ? They are chiefly the 
qualities of mental activity, enterprise, and courage. 
But are not all these qualities fully as much required 
for preserving the good we have as for adding to it? 
If there is any thing certain in human affairs, it is that 
valuable acquisitions are only to be retained by the 
continuation of the same energies whicli gained them. 
Things left to take care of themselves inevitably de- 
cay. Those whom success induces to relax their hab- 
its of care and thoughtful ness, and their willingness 
to encounter disagreeables, seldom long retain their 
good fortune at its height. The mental attribute 
which seems exclusively dedicated to Progress, and is 
the culmination of the tendencies to it, is Originality, 
or Invention. Yet this is no less necessary for Per- 
manence, since, in the inevitable changes of human 
affairs, new inconveniences and dangers continually 
grow up, which must be encountered by new resources 
and contrivances, in order to keep things going on 
even only as well as they did before. Whatever qual- 
ities, therefore, in a government tend to encourage ac- 
tivity, energy, courage, originality, are requisites of 
Permanence as well as of Progress, only a somewhat 
less degree of them will, on the average, suffice for the 
former purpose than for the latter. 

To pass now from the mental to the outward and 



I 



82 CRITERION OF A GOOD 

objective requisites of society : it is impossible to point 
out any contrivance in politics, or arrangement of so 
cial affairs, which conduces to Order only, or to Prog 
ress only; whatever tends to either promotes both 
Take, for instance, the common institution of a police 
Order is the object which seems most immediately in 
terested in the efficiency of this part of the social or 
ganization. Yet, if it is effectual to promote Order, 
that is, if it represses crime, and enables every one to 
feel his person and property secure, can any state of 
things be more conducive to Progress ? The greater 
security of property is one of the main conditions and 
causes of greater production, which is Progress in its 
most familiar and vulgarest aspect. The better re- 
pression of crime represses the dispositions which tend 
to crime, and this is Progress in a somewhat higher 
sense. The release of the individual from the cares 
and anxieties of a state- of imperfect protection sets 
his faculties free to be employed in any new effort for 
improving his own state and that of others, while the 
same cause, by attaching him to social existence, and 
making him no longer see present or prospective ene- 
mies in his fellow-creatures, fosters all those feelings 
of kindness and fellowship toward others, and interest 
in the general well-being of the community, which are 
such important parts of social improvement. 

Take, again, such a familiar case as that of a good 
system of taxation and finance. This would generally 
be classed as belonging to the province of Order. Yet 
what can be more conducive to Progress ? A finan- 
cial system which promotes the one, conduces, by the 



FORM OF GOVERNMENT. 33 

very same excellences, to the other. Economy, for 
example, equally preserves the existing stock of na- 
tional wealth, and favors the creation of more. A just 
distribution of burdens, by holding up to every citi- 
zen an example of morality and good conscience ap- 
plied to difficult adjustments, and an evidence of the 
value which the highest authorities attach to them, 
tends in an eminent degree to educate the moral sen- 
timents of the community, both in respect of strength 
and of discrimination. Such a mode of levying the 
taxes as does not impede the industry, or unnecessa- 
rily interfere with the liberty of the citizen, promotes, 
not the preservation only, but the increase of the na- 
tional wealth, and encourages a more active use of 
the individual faculties ; and vice versd^ all errors in 
finance and taxation which obstruct the improvement 
of the people in wealth and morals, tend also, if of > suf- 
ficiently .serious amount, positively to impoverish and 
demoralize them. It holds, in short, universally, that 
when Order and Permanence are taken in their widest 
sense for the stability of existing advantages, the req- 
uisites of Progress are but the requisites of Order in a 
greater degree ; those of Permanence merely those of 
Progress in a somewhat smaller measure. • 

In support of the position that Order is intrinsically 
different from Progress, and that preservation of ex- 
isting and acquisition of additional good are sufficient- 
ly distinct to afford the basis of a fundamental classi- 
fication, we shall perhaps be reminded that Progress 
may be at the expense of Order ; that while we are 
acquiring, or striving to acquire, good of one kind, we 
B2 



84: CRITERION OF A GOOD 

may be losing ground in respect to others ; thus there 
may be progress in wealth while there is deterioration 
in virtue. Grranting this, what it proves is, not that 
Progress is generically a different thing from Perma- 
nence, but that wealth is a different thing from virtue. 
Progress is Permanence and somethii^g more ; and it 
is no answer to this to say that Progress in one thing 
does not imply Permanence in every thing. No more 
does Progress in one thing imply Progress in, every 
thing. Progress of any kind includes Permanence in 
that same kind : whenever Permanence is sacrificed 
to some particular kind of Progress, other Progress is 
still more sacrificed to it ; and if it be not worth the 
sacrifice, not the interest of Permanence alone has been 
disregarded, but the general interest of Progress has 
been mistaken. 

If these improperly contrasted ideas are to be used 
at all in the attempt to give a first commencement of 
scientific precision to the notion of good government, 
it would be more philosophically correct to leave out 
of the definition the word Order, and to say that the 
best government is that which is most conducive to 
Progress. For Progress includes Order, but Order 
does not include Progress. Progress is a greater de- 
gree of that of which Order is a less. Order, in any 
other sense, stands only for a part of the prerequisites 
of good government, not for its idea and essence. 
Order would find a more suitable place among the 
conditions of Progress, since, if we would increase 
our sum of good, nothing is more indispensable than 
to take due care of what w^e already have. If we are 



FORM OF GOVERNMENT. 85 

endeavoring after more riches, our very first rule 
should be, not to squander uselessly our existing 
means. Order, thus considered, is not an additional 
end to be reconciled with Progress, but a part and 
means of Progress itself. If a gain in one respect is 
purchased by a more than equivalent loss in the same 
or in any other, there is not Progress. Conducive- 
ness to Progress, thus understood, includes the whole 
excellence of a government. 

But, though metaphysically defensible, this defini- 
tion of the criterion of good government is not appro- 
priate, because, though it contains the whole of- the 
truth, it recalls only a part. What is suggested b}^ 
the term Progress is the idea of moving onward, 
whereas the meaning of it here is quite as much the 
prevention of falling back. The very same social 
causes — the same beliefs, feelings, institutions, and 
practices — are as much required to prevent society 
from retrograding as to produce a farther advance. 
Were there no improvement to be hoped for, life 
would be not the less an unceasing struggle against 
causes of deterioration, as it even now is. Politics, 
as conceived by the ancients, consisted wholly in this. 
The natural tendency of men and their works was to 
degenerate, which tendency, however, by good insti- 
tutions virtuously administered, it might be possible 
for an indefinite length of time to counteract. Though 
we no longer hold this opinion ; though most men in 
the present age profess the contrary creed, believing 
that the tendency of things, on the whole, is toward 
improvement, we ought not to forget that there is an 



86 CRITERION OF A GOOD 

incessant and ever-flowing current of human affairs 
toward the worse, consisting of all the follies, all the 
vices, all the negligences, indolences, and mipinenesses 
of mankind, which is only controlled, and kept from 
sweeping all before it, by the exertions which some 
persons constantly, and others by fits, put forth in the 
direction of good and worthy objects. It gives a very 
insufficient idea of the importance of the strivings 
which take place to improve and elevate human na- 
ture and life to suppose that their chief value consists 
in the amount of actual improvement realized by their 
means, and that the consequence of their cessation 
would merely be that we should remain as we are. 
A very small diminution of those exertions would 
not only put a stop to improvement, but would turn 
the general tendency of things toward deterioration, 
which, once begun, would proceed with increasing ra- 
pidity, and become more and more difficult to check, 
until it reached a state often seen in history, and in 
which many large portions of mankind even now 
grovel ; when hardly any thing short of superhuman 
power seems sufficient to turn the tide, and give a 
fresh commencement to the upward movement. 

These reasons make the word Progress as unapt as 
the term^ Order and Permanence to become the basis 
for a classification of the requisites of a form of gov- 
ernment. The fundamental antithesis which these 
words express does not lie in the things themselves, 
so much as in the types of human character which 
answer to them. There are, we know, some minds 
in which caution, and others in which boldness, pre- 



FORM OF GOVERNMENT. B7 

dominates; in some, the desire to avoid imperiling 
what is already possessed is a stronger sentiment than 
that which prompts to improve the old and acquire 
new advantages ; while there are others who lean the 
contrary way, and are more eager for future than 
careful of present good. The road to the ends of 
both is the same, but they are liable to wander from 
it in opposite directions. This consideration is of im- 
portance in composing the personnel of any political 
body : persons of both types ought to be included in 
it, that the tendencies of each may be tempered, in so 
far as they are excessive, by a due proportion of the 
other. There needs no express provision to insure 
this object, provided care is taken to admit nothing 
inconsistent with it. The natural and spontaneous 
admixture of the old and the young, of those whose 
position and reputation are made, and those who have 
them still to make, will in general sufficiently answer 
the purpose, if only this natural balance is not dis- 
turbed by artificial regulation. 

Since the distinction most commonly adopted for 
the classification of social exigencies does not possess 
the properties needful for that use, we have to seek 
for some other leading distinction better adapted to 
the purpose. Such a distinction would seem to be 
in4icated by the considerations to which I now pro- 
ceed. 

If we ask ourselves on what causes and conditions 
good government in all its senses, from the humblest 
to the most exalted, depends, we find that the princi- 



38 CRITERION OF A GOOD 

pal of them, the one which transcends all others, is the 
qualities of the human beings composing the society 
over which the government is exercised. 

We may take, as a first instance, the administration 
of justice; with the more propriety, since there is no 
part of public business in which the mere machinery, 
the rules and contrivances for conducting the details 
of the operation, are of such vital consequence. Yet 
even these yield in importance to the qualities of the 
human agents employed. Of what efficacy are rules 
of procedure in securing the ends of justice if the 
moral condition of the people is such that the wit- 
nesses generally lie, and the judges and their sub- 
ordinates take bribes? Again, how can institutions 
provide a good municipal administration if there ex- 
ists such indifference to the subject that those who 
would administer honestly and capably can not be 
induced to serve, and the duties are left to those who 
undertake them because they have some private in- 
terest to be promoted? Of what avail is the most 
broadly popular representative system if the electors 
do not care to choose the best member of Parliament, 
but choose him who will spend most money to be 
elected? How can a representative assembly work 
for good if its members can be bought, or if their ex- 
citability of temperament, uncorrected by public dis- 
cipline or private self-control, makes them incapq^ble 
of calm deliberation, and they resort to manual vio- 
lence on the floor of the House, or shoot at one an- 
other with rifles? How, again, can government, or 
any joint concern, be carried on in a tolerable manner 



FOKM OF GOVEKNMENT. 89 

by a people so envious, that if one among them seems 
likely to succeed in any thing, those who ought to co- 
operate with him form a tacit combination to make 
him fail? Whenever the general disposition of the 
people is such that each individual regards those only 
of his interests which are selfish, and does not dwell 
on, or concern himself for, his share of the general 
interest, in such a state of things good government is 
impossible. The influence of defects of intelligence 
in obstructing all the elements of good . government 
requires no illustration. Government consists of acts 
done by human beings ; and if the agents, or those 
who choose the agents, or those to whom the agents 
are responsible, or the lookers-on whose opinion ought 
to influence and check all these, are mere masses of 
ignorance, stupidity, and baleful prejudice, every op- 
eration of government will go wrong ; while, in pro- 
portion as the men rise above this standard, so will 
the government improve in quality up to the point 
of excellence, attainable but nowhere attained, where 
the ofl&cers of government, themselves persons of su- 
perior virtue and intellect, are surrounded by the at- 
mosphere of a virtuous and enlightened public opinion. 
The first element of good government, therefore^ 
'being the virtue and intelligence of the human beings 
composing the community, the most important point 
of excellence which any form of government can pos- 
sess is to promote the virtue and intelligence of the 
people themselves. The first question in respect to 
any political institutions is how far they tend to foster 
an the members of the community the various desira- 



40 CRITERION OF A GOOD 

ble qualities, moral or intellectual, or rather (follow- 
ing Bentham's more complete classification) moral, 
intellectual, and active. The government which does 
this the best has every likelihood of being the best in 
all other respects, since it is on these qualities, so far 
as they exist in the people, that all possibility of 
goodness in the practical operations of the govern- 
ment depends. 

We may consider, then, as one criterion of the 
goodness of a government, the degree in which it 
tends to increase the sum of good qualities in the 
governed, collectively and individually, since, besides 
that their well-being is the sole object of government, 
their good qualities supply the moving force which 
works the machinery. This leaves, as the other con- 
stituent element of the merit of a government, the 
quality of the machinery itself; that is, the degree in 
which it is adapted to take advantage of the amount 
of good qualities which may at any time exist, and 
make them instrumental to the right purposes. Let 
us again take the subject of judicature as an example 
and illustration. The judicial system being given, 
the goodness of the administration of justice is in the 
compound ratio of the worth of the men .composing 
the tribunals, and the worth of the public opinion 
which influences or controls them. But all the differ- 
ence between a good and a bad system of judicature 
lies in the contrivances adopted for bringing whatever 
moral and intellectual worth exists in the community 
to bear upon the administration of justice, and making 
it duly operative on the result. The arrangements 



FORM OF GOVERNMENT. 41 

for rendering the choice of the judges such as to ob- 
tain the highest average of virtue and intelligence ; 
the salutary forms of procedure ; the publicity which 
allows observation and criticism of whatever is amiss ; 
the liberty of discussion and censure through the 
press ; the mode of taking evidence, according as it is 
well or ill adapted to elicit truth ; the facilities, what- 
ever be their amount, for obtaining access to the tri- 
bunals; the arrangements for detecting crimes and 
apprehending offenders — all these things are not the 
power, but the machinery for bringing the power into 
contact with the obstacle ; and the machinery has no 
action of itself, but without it the power, let it be ever 
so ample, would be wasted and of no effect. A sim- 
ilar distinction exists in regard to the constitution of 
the executive departments of administration. Their 
machinery is good when the proper tests are prescribed 
for the qualifications of officers, the proper rules for 
their promotion; when the business is conveniently 
distributed among those who are to transact it, a con- 
venient and methodical order established for its trans- 
action, a correct and intelligible record kept of it after 
being transacted ; when each individual knows for 
what he is responsible, and is known to others as re- 
sponsible for it ; when the best-contrived checks are 
provided against negligence, favoritism, or jobbery in 
any of the acts of the department. But political 
checks will no more act of themselves than a bridle 
will direct a horse without a rider. If the checking 
functionaries are as corrupt or as negligent as those 
whom they ought to check, and if the public, the 



42 CRITERION OF A GOOD 

mainspring of the whole checking machinery, are too 
ignorant, too passive, or too careless and inattentive 
to do their part, little benefit will be derived from the 
best administrative apparatus. Yet a good apparatus 
is always preferable to a bad. It enables such insuf- 
ficient moving or checking power as exists to act at 
the greatest advantage; and without it, no amount 
of moving or checking power would be sufficient. 
Publicity, for instance, is no impediment to evil, nor 
stimulus to good, if the public will not look at what 
is done ; but without publicity, how could they either 
check or encourage what they were not permitted to 
see ? The ideally perfect constitution of a public of- 
fice is that in which the interest of the functionary is 
entirely coincident with his duty. No mere system 
will make it so, but still less can it be made so with- 
out a system, aptly devised for the purpose. 

What we have said of the arrangements for the de- 
tailed administration of the government is still more 
evidently true of its general constitution. All gov- 
ernment which aims at being good is an organization 
of some part of the good qualities existing in the in- 
dividual members of the community for the conduct 
of its collective affairs. A representative constitution 
is a means of bringing the general standard of intelli- 
gence and honesty existing in the community, and the 
individual intellect and virtue of its wisest members, 
more directly to bear upon the government, and in- 
vesting them with greater influence in it than they 
would have under any other mode of organization; 
though, under any, such influence as they do have is 



FORM OF GOVEKNMENT. 43 

tlie source of all good that there is in the government, 
and the hinderance of every evil that there is not. 
The greater the amount of these good qualities which 
the institutions of a country succeed in organizing, 
and the better the mode of organization, the better 
will be the government. 

We have now, therefore, obtained a foundation for 
a twofold division of the merit which any set of po- 
litical institutions can possess. It consists partly of 
the degree in which they promote the general mental 
advancement of the community, including under that 
phrase advancement in intellect, in virtue, and in prac- 
tical activity and efficiency, and partly of the degree 
of perfection with which they organize the moral, in- 
tellectual, and active worth already existing, so as to 
operate with the greatest effect on public affairs. A 
government is to be judged by its action upon men 
and by its action upon things ; by what it makes of 
the citizens and what it does with them ; its tendency 
to improve or deteriorate the people themselves, and 
the goodness or badness of the work it performs for 
them, and by means of them. Government is at once 
a great influence acting on the human mind, and a set 
of organized arrangements for public business : in the 
first capacity its beneficial action is chiefly indirect, 
but not therefore less vital, while its mischievous ac- 
tion may be direct. 

The difference between these two functions of a 
government is not, like that between Order and Prog- 
ress, a difference merely in degree, but in kind. We 
must not, however, suppose that they have no intimate 



44 CRITERION OF A GOOD 

connection with one another. The institutions which 
insure the best management of pubhc affairs practica- 
ble in the existing state of cultivation, tend by this 
alone to the farther improvement of that state. A 
people which had the most just laws, the purest and 
most efficient judicature, the most enlightened admin- 
istration, the most equitable and least onerous system 
of finance, compatible with the stage it had attained 
in moral and intellectual advancement, would be in a 
fair way to pass rapidly into a higher stage. Nor is 
there any mode in which political institutions can 
contribute more effectually to the improvement of the 
people than by doing their more direct work well. 
And reversely, if their machinery is so badly con- 
structed that they do their own particular business 
ill, the effect is felt in a thousand ways in lowering 
the morality and deadening the intelligence and ac- 
tivity of the people. But the distinction is neverthe- 
less real, because this is only one of the means by 
which political institutions improve or deteriorate the 
human mind, and the causes and modes of that bene- 
ficial or injurious influence remain a distinct and 
much wider subject of study. 

Of the two modes of operation by which a form of 
government or set of political institutions affects the 
welfare of the community — its operation as an agency 
j of national education, and its arrangements for con- 
/ ducting the collective affairs of the community in the 
state of education in which they already are, the last 
evidently varies much less, from difference of country 
and state of civilization, than the first. It has also 



FORM OF GOVERNMENT. 45 

much less to do with the fundamental constitution of 
the government. The mode of conducting the prac- 
tical business of government, which is best mider a 
free constitution, would generally be best also in an 
absolute monarchy, only an absolute monarchy is not 
so likely to practice it. The laws of property, for ex- 
ample; the principles of evidence and judicial pro- 
cedure ; the system of taxation and of financial ad- 
ministration, need not necessarily be different in dif- 
ferent forms of government. Each of these matters 
has principles and rules of its own, which are a sub- 
ject of separate study. General jurisprudence, civil 
and penal legislation, financial and commercial policy, 
are sciences in themselves, or, rather, separate mem- 
bers of the comprehensive science or art of govern- 
ment ; and the most enlightened doctrines on all these 
subjects, though not equally likely to be understood 
and acted on under all forms of government, yet, if 
understood and acted on, would in general be equally 
beneficial under them all. It is true that these doc- 
trines could not be applied without some modifications 
to all states of society and of the human mind ; nev- 
ertheless, by far the greater number of them w^ould 
require modifications solely of detail to adapt them 
to any state of society sufficiently advanced to possess 
rulers capable of understanding them. A govern- 
ment to which they would be wholly unsuitable must 
be one so bad in itself, or so opposed to public feel- 
ing, as to be unable to maintain itself in existence by 
honest means. 

It is otherwise with that portion of the interests of 



46 CRITERION OF A GOOD 

the community which relate to the better or worse 
training of the people themselves. Considered as in- 
strumental to this, institutions need to be radically dif- 
ferent, according to the stage of advancement already 
reached. The recognition of this truth, though for the 
most part empirically rather than philosophically, may 
be regarded as the main point of superiority in the 
political theories of the present above those of the last 
age, in which it was customary to claim representative 
democracy for England or France by arguments which 
would equally have proved it the only fit form of gov- 
ernment for Bedouins or Malays. The state of dif- 
ferent communities, in point of culture and develop- 
ment, ranges downward to a condition very little above 
the highest of the beasts. The upward range, too, is 
considerable, and the future possible extension vastly 
greater. A community can only be developed out of 
one of these states into a higher by a concourse of in- 
fluences, among the principal of which is the govern- 
ment to which they are subject. In all states of hu- 
man improvement ever yet attained, the nature and 
degree of authority exercised over individuals, the dis- 
tribution of power, and the conditions of command 
and obedience, are the most powerful of the influences, 
except their religious belief, which make them what 
they are, and enable them to become what they can 
be. They may be stopped short at any point in their 
progress by defective adaptation of their government 
to their particular stage of advancement. And the 
one indispensable merit of a government, in favor of 
which it may be forgiven almost any amount of other 



FORM OF GOVERNMENT. 47 

demerit compatible with progress, is that its operation 
on the people is favorable, or not unfavorable, to the 
next step which it is necessary for them to take in 
order to raise themselves to a higher level. 

Thus (to repeat a forijier example) a people in a 
state of savage independence, in which every one lives 
for himself, exempt, unless by fits, from any external 
control, is practically incapable of making any prog- 
ress in civilization until it has learned to obey. The 
indispensable virtue, therefore, in a government which 
establishes itself over a people of this sort is that it 
make itself obeyed. To enable it to do this, the con- 
stitution of the government must be nearly, or quite 
despotic. A constitution in any degree popular, de- 
pendent on the voluntary surrender by the different 
members of the community of their individual freedom 
of action, would fail to enforce the first lesson which 
the pupils, in this stage of their progress, require. Ac- 
cordingly, the civilization of such tribes, when not the 
result of juxtaposition with others already civilized, 
is almost always the work of an absolute ruler, deriv- 
ing his power either from religion or military prow- 
ess — very often from foreign arms. 

Again, uncivilized races, and the bravest and most 
energetic still more than the rest, are averse to con- 
tinuous labor of^an unexciting kind. Yet all real civ- 
ilization is at this price ; without such labor, neither 
can the mind be disciplined into the habits required 
by civilized society, nor the material world prepared 
to receive it. There needs a rare concurrence of cir- 
cumstances, and for that reason often a vast length of 



48 CEITEEION OF A GOOD 

time, to reconcile such a people to industry, unless 
they are for a while .compelled to it. Hence even per- 
sonal slavery, by giving a commencement to industrial 
life, and enforcing it as the exclusive occupation of 
the most numerous portion* of the community, may 
accelerate the transition to a better freedom than that 
of fighting and rapine. It is almost needless to say 
that this excuse for slavery is only available in a very 
early state of society. A civilized people have far 
other means of imparting civilization to those under 
their influence ; and slavery is, in all its details, so re- 
])Ugnant to that government of law, which is the foun- 
dation of all modern life, and so corrupting to the mas- 
ter-class when they have once come under civilized 
influences, that its adoption under any circumstances 
whatever in modern society is a relapse into worse 
than barbarism. 

At some period, however, of their history, almost 
every people, now civilized, have consisted, in major- 
ity, of slaves. A people in that condition require to 
raise them out of it a very different polity from a na- 
tion of savages. If they are energetic by nature, and 
especially if there be associated with them in the same 
community an industrious class who are neither slaves 
nor slave-owners (as was the case in Greece), they 
need, probably, no more to insure their improvement 
than to make them free : when freed, they may often 
be fit, like Koman freedmen, to be admitted at once 
into the full rights of citizenship. This, however, is 
not the normal condition of slavery, and is generally 
a sign that it is becoming obsolete. A slave, properly 



FORM OF GOVERNMENT. 49 

SO called, is a being who has not learned to help him- 
self. Pie is, no doubt, one step in advance of a savage. 
He has not the first lesson of political society still to 
acquire. He has learned to obey. But what he obeys 
is only a direct command. It is the characteristic of 
honi slaves to be incapable of conforming their con- 
duct to a rule or law. They can only do what they 
are ordered, and only when they are ordered to do it. 
If a man whom they fear is standing over them and 
threatening them with punishment, they obey; but 
when his back is turned, the work remains undone. 
The motive determining them must appeal, not to their 
interests, but to their instincts ; immediate hope or im- 
mediate terror. A despotism which may tame the 
savage will, in so far as it is a despotism, only con- 
firm the slaves in their incapacities. Yet a govern- 
ment under their own control would be entirely un- 
manageable by them. Their improvement can not 
come from themselves, but must be superinduced from 
without. The step which they have to take, and their 
only path to improvement, is to be raised from a gov- 
ernment of will to one of law. They have to be 
taught self-government, and this, in its initial stage, 
means the capacity to act on general instructions. 
What they require is not a government of force, but 
one of guidance. Being, however, in too low a state 
to yield to the guidance of any but those to whom 
they look up as the possessors of force, the sort of 
government fittest for them is one which possesses 
force, but seldom uses it ; a parental despotism or aris- 
tocracy, resembling the St. Simonian form of social- 

C 



50 CRITERION OF A GOOD 

ism ; maintaining a general superintendence over all 
the operations of society, so as to keep before each 
the sense of a present force sufiicient to compel his 
obedience to the rule laid down, but which, owing to 
the impossibility of descending to regulate all the 
minutige of industry and life, necessarily leaves and 
induces individuals to do much of themselves. This, 
which may be termed the government of leading- 
strings, seems to be the one required to carry such a 
people the most rapidly through the next necessary 
step in social progress. Such appears to have been 
the idea of the government of the Incas of Peru, and 
such was that of the Jesuits in Paraguay. I need 
scarcely remark that leading-strings are only admis- 
sible as a means of gradually training the people to 
walk alone. 

It would be out of place to carry the illustration 
farther. To attempt to investigate what kind of 
government is suited to every known state of society 
would be to compose a treatise, not on representative 
government, but on political science at large. For 
our more limited purpose we borrow from political 
philosophy only its general principles. To determine 
the form of government most suited to any particular 
people, we must be able, among the defects and short- 
comings which belong to that people, to distinguish 
those that are the immediate impediment to progress 
— to discover what it is which (as it were) stops the 
wav. The best government for them is the one which 
tends most to give them that for want of which they 
can not advance, or advance only in a lame and lop- 



FORM OF GOVERNMENT. 51 

sided manner. We must not, however, forget the res- 
ervation necessary in all things which have for their 
object improvement or Progress, namely, that in seek- 
ing the good which is needed, no damage, or as little 
as possible, be done to that already possessed. A peo- 
ple of savages should be taught obedience, but not in 
such a manner as to convert them into a people of 
slaves. And (to give the observation a higher gener- 
ality) the form of government which is most effectual 
for carrying a people through the next stage of prog- 
ress will still be very improper for them if it does 
this in such a manner as to obstruct, or positively un- 
fit them for, the step next beyond. Such cases are 
frequent, and are among the most melanchol}^ facts in 
history. The Egyptian hierarchy, the paternal des- 
potism of China, were very fit instruments for carry- 
ing those nations up to the point of civilization which 
they attained. But, having reached that point, they 
were brought to a permanent halt for want of mental 
liberty and individuality — requisites of improvement 
which the institutions that had carried them thus far 
entirely incapacitated them from acquiring — and as 
the institutions did not break down and give place 
to others, farther improvement stopped. In contrast 
with these nations, let us consider the example of an 
opposite character afforded by another and a compara- 
tively insignificant Oriental people — the Jews. They, 
too, had an absolute monarchy and a hierarchy, and 
their organized institutions wei^e as obviously of sac- 
erdotal origin as those of the Hindoos. These did for 
them what was done for other Oriental races by their 



52 CRITERION OF A GOOD 

institutions — subdued them to industry and order, and 
gave them a national life. But neither their kings 
nor their priests ever obtained, as in those other coun- 
tries, the exclusive moulding of their character. Their 
religion, which enabled persons of genius and a high 
religious tone to be regarded and to regard themselves 
as inspired from heaven, gave existence to- an inesti- 
mably precious unorganized institution — the Order (if 
it may be so termed) of Prophets. Under the protec- 
tion, generally though not always effectual, of their 
sacred character, the Prophets were a power in the 
nation, often more than a match for kings and priests, 
and kept up, in that little corner of the earth, the an- 
tagonism of influences which is the only real security 
for continued progress. Keligion, consequently, was 
not there what it has been in so many other places — 
a consecration of all that was once established, and a 
barrier against farther improvement. The remark of 
a distinguished Hebrew, M. Salvador, that the Proph- 
ets were, in Church and State, the equivalent of the 
modern liberty of the press, gives a just but not an 
adequate conception of the part fulfilled in national 
and universal history by this great element of Jewish 
life; by means of which, the canon of inspiration nev- 
er being complete, the persons most eminent in genius 
and moral feeling could not only denounce and rep- 
robate, with the direct authority of the Almighty, 
whatever appeared to them deserving of such treat- 
ment, but could give forth better and higher inter- 
pretations of the national religion, which thenceforth 
became part of the religion. Accordingly, whoever 



FORM OF GOVERNMENT. 53 

can divest himself of the habit of reading the Bible as 
if it was one book, which until lately was equally in- 
veterate in Christians and in unbelievers, sees with 
admiration the vast interval between the morality and 
religion of the Pentateuch, or even of the historical 
books (the unmistakable work of Hebrew Conserva- 
tives of the sacerdotal order), and the morality and 
religion of the prophecies — a distance as wide as be- 
tween these last and the Grospels. Conditions more 
favorable to Progress could not easily exist ; accord- 
ingly, the Jews, instead of being stationary like other 
Asiatics, were, next to the Greeks, the most progress- 
ive people of antiquity, and, jointly with them, have 
been the starting-point and main propelling agency 
of modern cultivation. 

It is, then, impossible to understand the question of 
the adaptation of forms of government to states of 
society, without taking into account not only the next 
step, but all the steps which society has yet to make; 
both those which can be foreseen, and the far wider 
indefinite range which is at present out of sight. It' 
follows, that to judge of the merits of forms of gov- 
ernment, an ideal must be constructed of the form of 
government most eligible in itself, that is, which, if 
the necessary conditions existed for giving effect to 
its beneficial tendencies, would, more than all others, 
favor and promote, not some one improvement, but 
all forms and degrees of it. This having been done, 
we must consider what are the mental conditions of 
all sorts necessary to enable this government to real- 
ize its tendencies, and what, therefore, are the various 



54 CRITERION OF A GOOD FORM OF GOVERNMENT. 

defects by which a people is made incapable of reap- 
ing its benefits. It would then be possible to con- 
struct a theorem of the circumstances in which that 
form of government may wisely be introduced ; and 
also to judge, in cases in which it had better not be 
introduced, what inferior forms of polity will best 
carry those communities through the intermediate 
stages which they must traverse before they can be- 
come fit for the best form of government. 

Of these inquiries, the last does not concern tis 
here, but the first is an essential part of our subject; 
for we may, without rashness, at once enunciate a 
proposition, the proofs and illustrations of which will 
present themselves in the ensuing pages, that this 
ideally best form of government will be found in 
some one or other variety of the Kepresentative 
System. 



KEPKESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT, ETC. 55 



CHAPTER III. 

THAT THE IDEALLY BEST FORM OF GOVERNMENT IS 
REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 

It has long (perhaps throughout the entire duration 
of British freedom) been a common form of speech, 
that if a good despot could be insured, despotic mon- 
archy would be the best form of government. I look 
upon this as a radical and most pernicious misconcep- 
tion of what good government is, which, until it can 
be got rid of, will fatally vitiate all our speculations 
on government. 

The supposition is, that absolute power, in the 
hands of sm eminent individual, would insure a vir- 
tuous and intelligent performance of all the daties of 
government. Good laws would be established and 
enforced, bad laws would be reformed ; the best men 
would be placed in all situations of trust; justice 
would be as w^ell administered, the public burdens 
would be as light and as judiciously imposed, every 
branch of administration would be as purely and as 
intelligently conducted as the circumstances of the 
country and its degree of intellectual and moral culti- 
vation would admit. I am willing, for the sake of 
the argument, to concede all this, but I must point 
out how great the concession is, how much more is 
needed to produce even an approximation to these 



56 REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

results than is conveyed in the simple expression, a 
good despot. Their realization would in fact imply, 
not merely a good monarch, but an all-seeing one. 
He must be at all times informed correctly, in consid- 
erable detail, of the conduct and working of every 
branch of administration, in every district of the 
country, and must be able, in the twenty-four hours 
per day, which, are all that is granted to a king as to 
the humblest laborer, to give an effective share of at- 
tention and superintendence to all parts of this vast 
field ; or he must at least be capable of discerning 
and choosing out, from among the mass of his sub- 
jects, not only a large abundance of honest and able 
men, fit to conduct every branch of public administra- 
tion under supervision and control, but also the small 
number of men of eminent virtues and talents who 
can be trusted not only to do without that supervision, 
but to exercise it themselves over others. So extra- 
ordinary are the faculties and energies required for 
performing this task in any supportable manner, that 
the good despot whom we are supposing can hardly 
be imagined as consenting to undertake it unless as a 
refuge from intolerable evils, and a transitional prepa- 
ration for something beyond. But the argument can 
do without even this immense item in the account. 
Suppose the difficulty vanquished. What should we 
then have ? One man of superhuman mental activity 
managing the entire affairs of a mentally passive peo- 
ple. Their passivity is implied in the very idea of 
absolute power. The nation as a whole, and every 
individual composing it, are without any potential 



THE IDEALLY BEST POLITY. 07 

voice in their own destiny. They exercise no will in 
respect to their collective interests. All is decided 
for them by a will not their own, which it is legally 
a crime for them to disobey. What sort of human 
beings can be formed under such a regimen ? What 
development can either their thinking or their active 
faculties attain under it? On matters of pure theory 
they might perhaps be allowed to speculate, so long- 
as their speculations either did not approach politics, 
or had not the remotest connection with its practice. 
On practical affairs they could at most be only suf- 
fered to suggest ; and even under the most moderate 
of despots, none but persons of already admitted or 
reputed superiority could hope that their suggestions 
would be known to, much less regarded by, those 
who had the management of affairs. A person must 
have a very unusual taste for intellectual exercise in 
and for itself who will put himself to the trouble of 
thought when it is to have no outward effect, or 
qualify himself for functions which he has no chance 
of beingiallowed to exercise. The only sufficient in- 
citement to mental exertion, in an 3^ but a few minds 
in a generation, is the prospect of some practical use 
to be made of its results. It does not follow that the 
nation will be wholly destitute of intellectual power. 
The common business of life, which must necessarily 
be performed by each individual or family for them- 
selves, will call forth some amount of intelligenceand 
practical ability within a certain narrow range of 
ideas. There ma}^ be a select class of savants who 
cultivate science with a view to its physical uses or 
.02 



0>i REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

for the pleasure of the pursuit. There will be a 
bureaucracy, and persons in training for the bureau- 
cracy, who will be taught at least some empirical 
maxims of government and public administration. 
There may be, and often has been, a systematic or- 
ganization of the best mental power in the country 
in some special direction (commonly militar}^) to pro- 
mote the grandeur of the despot. But the public at 
large remain without information and w^ithout interest 
on all the greater matters of practice ; or, if they have 
any knowledge of them, it is but a dilettante knowl- 
edge, like that which people have of the mechanical 
arts who have never handled a tool. Nor is it only 
in their intelligence that they suffer. Their moral 
capacities are equally stunted. Wherever the sphere 
of action of human beings is artificially circumscribed, 
their sentiments are narrowed and dwarfed in the 
same proportion. The food of feeling is action ; even 
domestic affection lives upon voluntary good offices. 
Let a person have nothing to do for his country, and 
he will not care for it. It has been said oftold that 
in a despotism there is at most but one patriot, the 
despot himself; and the saying rests on a just appre- 
ciation of the effects of absolute subjection even to a 
good and wise master. Eeligion remains ; and here, 
at least, it may be thought, is an agency that may be 
relied on for lifting men's eyes and minds above the 
dust at their feet. But religion, even supposing it 
to escape perversion for the purposes of despotism, 
ceases in these circumstances to be a social concern, 
aud narrows into a personal affair between an indi- 



THE IDEALLY BEST POLITY. 59 

vidual and his Maker, in- which the issue at stake is 
but his private salvation. Keligion in this shape is 
quite consistent with the most selfish and contracted 
egoism, and identifies the votary as little in feeling 
with the rest of his kind as sensuality itself. 

A good despotism means a government in which, 
so far as depends on the despot, there is no positive 
oppression by officers of state, but in which all the 
collective interests of the people are managed for 
them, all the thinking that has relation to collective 
interests done for them, and in which their minds are 
formed by, and consenting to, this abdication of their 
own energies. Leaving things to the government, 
like leaving them to Providence, is sjaionymous with 
caring nothing about them, and accepting their results, 
when disagreeable, as visitations of Nature. With 
the exception, therefore, of a few studious men who 
take an intellectual interest in speculation for its own 
sake, the intelligence and sentiments of the whole 
people are given up to the material interests, and 
when these are provided for, to the amusement and 
ornamentation of private life. But to say this is to 
say, if the whole testimony of history is worth any 
thing, that the era of national decline has arrived ; 
that is, if the nation had ever attained any thing to 
decline from. If it has never risen above the condi- 
tion of an Oriental people, in that condition it con- 
tinues to stagnate ; but if, like Greece or Eome, it had 
realized any thing higher, through the energy, patriot- 
ism, and enlargement of mind, which, as national qual- 
ities, are the fruits solely of freedom, it relapses in a 



60 KEPEESENTATIVE GOVEENMENT 

few generations into tlie Oriental state. And that 
state does not mean stupid tranquillity, witli security 
against change for the worse; it often means being 
overrun, conquered, and reduced to domestic slavery 
either by a stronger despot, or by the nearest barba- 
rous people who retain along with their savage rude- 
ness the energies of freedom. 

Such are not merely the natural tendencies, but 
the inherent necessities of despotic government, from 
which there is no outlet, unless in so far as the des- 
potism consents not to be despotism ; in so far as the 
supposed good despot abstains from exercising his 
power, and, though holding it in reserve, allows the 
general business of government to go on as if the peo- 
ple really governed themselves. However little prob- 
able it may be, we may imagine a despot observing 
many of the rules and restraints of constitutional gov- 
ernment. He might allow such freedom of the press 
and of discussion as would enable a public opinion to 
form and express itself on national affairs. He might 
suffer local interests to be managed, without the inter- 
ference of authority, by the people themselves. He 
might even surround himself with a council or coun- 
cils of government, freely chosen by the whole or some 
portion of the nation, retaining in his own hands the 
power of taxation, and the supreme legislative as well 
as executive authority. Were he to act thus, and so 
far abdicate as a despot, he would do away with a con- 
siderable part of the evils characteristic of despotism. 
Political activity and capacity for public affairs would 
no longer be prevented from growing up in the body 



THE IDEALLY BEST POLITY. 61 

of the nation, and a public opinion would form itself, 
not the mere echo of the government! But such im- 
provement would be the beginning of new difficulties. 
This public opinion, independent of the monarch's dic- 
tation, must be either with him or against him ; if not 
the one, it will be the other. All governments must 
displease many persons, and these having now regular 
organs, and being able to express their sentiments, 
opinions adverse to the measures of government would 
often be expressed. What is the monarch to do when 
these unfavorable opinions happen to be in the major- 
ity ? Is he to alter his course ? Is he to defer to the 
nation ? If so, he is^ no longer a despot, but a consti- 
tutional king ; an organ or first minister of the peo- 
ple, distinguished only by being irremovable. If not, 
he must either put down opposition by his despotic 
power, or there will arise a permanent antagonism be- 
tween the people and one man, which can have but 
one possible ending. Not even a religious principle 
of passive obedience and " right divine" would long 
ward off the natural consequences of such a position. 
The monarch would have to succumb, and conform to 
the conditions of constitutional royalty, or give place 
to some one who would. The despotism, being thus 
chiefly nominal, would possess few of the advantages 
supposed to belong to absolute monarchy, while it 
would realize in a very imperfect degree those of a 
free government, since, however great an amount of 
liberty the citizens might practically enjoy, they could 
never forget that they held it on sufferance, and by a 
concession which, under the existing constitution of 



62 EEPEESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

the state, might at any moment be resumed ; that they 
were legally slaves, though of a prudent or indulgent 
master. 

It is not much to be wondered at if impatient or dis- 
appointed reformers, groaning under the impediments 
opposed to the most salutary public improvements by 
the ignorance, the indifference, the untractableness, the 
perverse obstinacy of a people, and the corrupt com- 
binations of selfish private interests, armed with the 
powerful weapons afforded by free institutions, should 
at times sigh for a strong hand to bear down all these 
obstacles, and compel a recalcitrant people to be bet- 
ter governed. But (setting aside the fact that for one 
despot who novv^ and then reforms an abuse, there are 
ninety-nine who do nothing but create them) those 
who look in any such direction for the realization of 
their hopes leave out of the idea of good government 
its principal element, the improvement of the people 
themselves. One of the benefits of freedom is that un- 
der it the ruler can not pass by the people's minds, 
and amend their affairs for them without amending 
them. If it were possible for a people to be well gov- 
erned in spite of themselves, their good government 
would last no longer than the freedom of a people 
usually lasts who have been liberated by foreign arms 
without their own co-operation. It is true, a despot 
may educate the people, and to do so really would be 
the best apology for his despotism. But any educa- 
tion which aims at making human beings other than 
machines, in the long run makes them claim to have 
the control of their own actions. The leaders of French 



THE IDEALLY BEST POLITY. 68 

philosophy in the eighteenth century had been edu- 
cated by the Jesuits. Even Jesuit education, it seems, 
was sufficiently real to call forth the appetite for free- 
dom. Whatever invigorates the faculties, in however 
small a measure, creates an increased desire for their 
more unimpeded exercise ; and a popular education 
is a failure if it educates the people for any state but 
that which it will certainly induce them to desire, and 
most probably to demand. 

I am far from condemning, in cases of extreme exi- 
gency, the assumption of absolute power in the form 
of a temporary dictatorship. Free nations have, in 
times of old, conferred such power by their own choice, 
as a necessary medicine for diseases of the body poli- 
tic which could not be got rid of by less violent means. 
But its acceptance, even for a time strictly limited, 
can only be excused, if, like Solon or Pittacus, the dic- 
tator employs the whole power he assumes in remov- 
ing the obstacles which debar the nation from the en- 
joyment of freedom. A good despotism is an alto- 
gether false ideal, which practically (except as a means 
to some temporary purpose) becomes the most sense- 
less and dangerous of chimeras. Evil for evil, a good 
despotism, in a country at all advanced in civilization, 
is more noxious than a bad one, for it is far more re- 
laxing and enervating to the thoughts, feelings, and 
energies of the people. The despotism of Augustus 
prepared the Eomans for Tiberius. If the whole tone 
of their character had not first been prostrated by near- 
ly two generations of that mild slavery, they would 
probably have had spirit enough left to rebel against 
the more odiou.s one. 



64 REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

There is no difficulty in showing that the ideally 
best form of government is that in which the sover- 
eignty, or supreme controlling power in the last re- 
sort, is vested in the entire aggregate of the com- 
munity, ev-ery citizen not only having a voice in the 
exercise of that ultimate sovereignty, but being, at 
least occasionally, called on to take an actual part in 
the government by the personal discharge of some 
public function, local or general. 

To test this proposition, it has to be examined in 
reference to the two branches into which, as pointed 
out in the last chapter, the inquiry into the goodness 
of a government conveniently divides itself, namely, 
how far it promotes the good management of the 
affairs of society by means of the existing^ faculties, 
moral, intellectual, and active, of its various members, 
and what is its effect in improving or deteriorating 
those faculties. 

The ideally best form of government, it is scarcely 
necessary to say, does not mean one which is prac- 
ticable or eligible in all states of civilization, but the 
one which, in the circumstances in w^hich it is prac- 
ticable and eligible, is attended with the greatest 
amount of beneficial consequences, immediate and 
prospective. A completely popular government is 
the only polity which can make out any claim to this 
character. It is pre-eminent in both the departlnents 
between which the excellence of a political Constitu- 
tion is divided. It is both more favorable to present 
good government, and promotes a better and higher 
form of national character than any other polity what- 
soever. 



THE IDEALLY BEST POLITY. 6o 

Its superiority in reference to present well-being 
rests upon two principles, of as universal truth and 
applicability as any general propositions which can 
be laid down^ respecting human affairs. The first is, 
that the rights and interests of every or any person 
are only secure from being disregarded when the per- 
son interested is himself able, and habitually disposed 
to stand up for them. The second is, that the gen- 
eral prosperity attains a greater height, and is more 
widely diffused, in proportion to the amount and va- 
riety of the persatial energies enlisted in promoting it. 

Putting these two propositions into a shape more 
special to their present application — human beings are 
only secure from evil at the hands of others in pro- 
portion as they have the power of being, and are self- 
proteding ; and they only achieve a high degree of 
success in their struggle with Nature in proportion 
as they are self-dependent, relying on what they them- 
selves can do, either separately or in concert, rather 
than on what others do for them. 

The former proposition — that each is the only safe 
guardian of his own rights and interests — is one of 
those elementary maxims of prudence which every 
person capable of conducting his own affairs iroplicitly 
acts upon wherever he himself is interested. Many, 
indeed, have a great dislike to it as a political doc- 
trine, and are fond of holding it up to obloquy as a 
doctrine of universal selfishness. To which we may 
answer, that whenever it ceases to be true that man- 
kind, as a rule, prefer themselves to oihers, and those 
nearest to thcni to those more remote, from that mo- 



M REPKESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

ment Communism is not only practicable, but the only 
defensible form of society, and will, when that time 
arrives, be assuredly carried into effect. For my own 
part, not believing in universal selfishness, I have no 
difficulty in admitting that Communism w^ould even 
now be practicable among the elite of mankind, and 
may become so among the rest. But as this opinion 
is any thing but popular with those defenders of ex- 
isting institutions who find fault with the doctrine of 
the general predominance of self-interest,! am inclined 
to think they do in reality believe that most men con- 
sider themselves before other people. It is not, how- 
ever, necessary to affirm even thus much, in order to 
support the claim of all to participate in the sovereign 
power. We need not suppose that when power re- 
sides in an exclusive class, that class will knowingly 
and deliberately sacrifice the other classes to them- 
selves : it suffices that, in the absence of its natural 
defenders, the interest of the excluded is always in 
danger of being overlooked ; and, when looked at, is 
seen with very different eyes from those of the per- 
sons whom it directly concerns. In this country, for 
example, what are called the working-classes may be 
considered as excluded from all direct participation in 
the government. I do not believe that the classes 
who do participate in it have in general any intention 
of sacrificing the working classes to themselves. They 
once had that intention ; witness the persevering^at- 
tempts so long made to keep down wages by law. 
But in the present day, their ordinary disposition is 
the very opposite : they willingly make considerable 



THE IDKAIAjY best FOLITY. 67 

sacrifices, especially of their pecuniary interest, for the 
benefit of the working classes, and err rather by too 
lavish and indiscriminating beneficence ; nor do I be- 
lieve that any rulers in history have been actuated by 
a more sincere desire to do their duty toward the 
poorer portion of their countrymen. Yet does. Par- 
liament, or almost any of the members composing it, 
ever for an instant look at any question with the eyes 
of a working man? When a subject arises in which 
the laborers as such have an interest, is it regarded 
from any point of view but that of the employers of 
labor? I do not say that the working men's view 
of these questions is in general nearer to truth than 
the other, but it is sometimes quite as near; and in 
any case it ought to be respectfully listened to, instead 
of being, as it is, not merely turned away from, but 
ignored. On the question of strikes, for instance, it is 
doubtful if there is so much as one among the leading 
members of either House who is not firmly convinced 
that the reason of the matter is unqualifiedly on the 
side of the masters, and that the men's view of it is 
simply absurd. Those who have studied the ques- 
tion know well how far this is from being the case, 
and in how different, and how infinitely less super- 
ficial a manner the point would have to be argued if 
the classes who strike were able to make themselves 
heard in Parliament. 

It is an inherent condition of human affairs that no 
intention, however sincere, of protecting the interests 
of others can make it safe or salutary to tie up their 
own hands. Still more obviously true is it that by 



05 REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

their own hands only can any positive and durable 
improvement of their circumstances in life be worked 
out. Through the joint influence of these two princi- 
ples, all free communities have both been more exempt 
from social injustice and crime, and have attained 
more brilliant prosperity than any others, or than they 
themselves after they lost their freedom. Contrast the 
free states of the world, while their freedom lasted, 
with the contemporary subjects of monarchical or oli- 
garchical despotism: the Grreek cities with the Per- 
sian satrapies ; the Italian republics, and the free 
towns of Flanders and Germany, with the feudal 
monarchies of Europe ; Switzerland, Holland, and 
England with Austria or ante-revolutionary France. 
Their superior prosperity was too obvious ever to 
have been gainsaj^ed ; while their superiority in good 
government and social relations is proved by the pros- 
perity, and is manifest besides in every page of his- 
tory. If we compare, not one age with another, but 
the different governments which coexisted in the same 
age, no amount of disorder which exaggeration itself 
can pretend to have existed amid the publicity of the 
free states can be compared for a moment with the 
contemptuous trampling upon the mass of the people 
which pervaded the whole life of the monarchical 
countries, or the disgusting individual tyranny which 
was of more than daily occurrence under the systems 
of plunder which they called fiscal arrangements, and 
in the secrecy of their frightful courts of justice. 

It must be acknowledged that the benefits of free- 
dom, so far as they have hitherto been enjoyed, were 



THE IDEALLY BEST POLITY. 69 

obtained by the evtension of its privileges to a part 
only of the community, and that a government in 
which they are extended impartially to all is a desid- 
eratum still unrealized. But, though every approach 
to this has an independent value, and in many cases 
more than an approach could not, in the existing state 
of general improvement, be made, the participation of 
all in these benefits is the ideally perfect conception 
of free government. In proportion as any, no matter 
who, are excluded from it, the interests of the ex- 
cluded are left without the guaranty accorded to the 
rest, and they themselves have less scope and encour- 
agement than they might otherwise have to that ex- 
ertion of their energies for the good of themselves 
and of the community to which the general prosperi- 
ty is always proportioned. 

Thus stands the case as regards present well-being 
— the good management of the affairs of the existing 
generation. If we now pass to the influence of the 
form of government upon character, we shall find the 
superiority of popular government over every other 
to be, if possible, still more decided and indisputable. 

This question really depends upon a still more fun- 
damental one, viz., which of two common types of 
character, for the general good of humanity, it is most 
desirable should predominate — the active or the pass- 
ive type ; that which struggles against evils, or that 
which endures them; that which bends to circum- 
stances, or that which endeavore to bend circum- 
stances to itself. 

The commonplaces of moralists and the general 



70 REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

sympathies of mankind are in favor of the passive 
type. Energetic characters may be admired, but the 
acquiescent and submissive are those which most men 
personally prefer. The passiveness of our neighbors 
increases our own sense of security, and plays into the 
hands of our willfulness. Passive characters, if we do 
not happen to need their activity, seem an obstruction 
the less in our own path. A contented (Character is 
not a dangerous rival. Yet nothing is more certain 
than that improvement in human affairs is wholly the 
work of the uncontented characters ; and, moreover, 
that it is much easier for an active mind to acquire 
the virtues of patience, than for a passive one to as- 
sume those of energy. 

Of the three varieties of mental excellence, intel- 
lectual, practical, and moral, there never could be any 
doubt, in regard to the first two, which side had the 
advantage. All intellectual superiority is the fruit of 
active effort. Enterprise, the desire to keep moving, 
to be trying and accomplishing new things for our 
own benefit or that of others, is the parent even of 
speculative, and much more of practical talent. The 
intellectual culture con^patible with the other type is 
of that feeble and vagu-e description which belongs to 
a mind that stops at amusement or at simple contem- 
plation. The test of real and vigorous thinking, the 
thinking wbicb ascertains truths instead of dreaming 
dreams, is successful application to practice. Where 
that purpose does not exist, to give definiteness, pre- 
cision, and an intelligible meaning to thought, it gen- 
erates nothing better than the mystical metaphysics 



THE IDEALLY BEST POLITY. 71 

of the Pythagoreans or the Veds. With respect to 
practical improvement, the case is still more evident. 
The character which improves human life is that 
which struggles with natural powers and tendencies, 
not that which gives way to them. The self-benefit- 
ing qualities are all on the side of the active and en- 
ergetic character, and the habits and conduct which 
promote the advantage of each individual member of 
the community must be at least a part of those which 
conduce most in the end to the advancement of the 
community as a whole. 

But, on the point of moral preferability, there seems 
at first sight to be room for doubt. I am not referring 
to the religious feeling which has so generally existed 
in favor of the inactive character, as being more in 
harmony with the submission due to the divine will. 
Christianity, as well as other religions, has fostered this 
sentiment; but it is the prerogative of Christianity, as 
regards this and many other perversions, that it is 
able to throw them off. Abstractedly from religious 
considerations, a passive character, w^hich jdelds to 
obstacles instead of striving to overcome them, may 
not indeed be very useful to others, no more than to 
itself, but it might be expected to be at least inoffen- 
sive. Contentment is always counted among the 
moral virtues. But it is a complete error to suppose 
that contentment is necessarily or naturally attendant 
on passivity of character : and unless it is, the moral 
consequences are mischievous. Where there exists a 
desire for advantages not possessed, the mind which 
does not potentially possess them by means of its own 



72 REPEESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

energies is apt to look with hatred and mahce on those 
who do. The person bestirring himself with hopeful 
prospects to improve his circumstances is the one who 
feels good-will toward others engaged in, or who have 
succeeded in the same pursuit. And where the ma- 
jority are so engaged, those who do not attain the 
object have had the tone given to their feelings by the 
general habit of the country, and ascribe their failure 
t o want of effort or opportunity, or to their personal 
ill luck. But those who, while desiring what others 
l^ossess, put no energy into striving for it, are either 
iiicessantly grumbling that fortune does not do for 
them what they do not attempt to do for themselves, 
or overflowing with envy and ill-will toward those 
who possess what they would like to have. 

In proportion as success in life is seen or believed 
to be the fruit of fatality or accident and not of exer- 
tion, in that same ratio does envy develop itself as a 
point of national character. The most envious ofall 
mankind are the Orientals. In Oriental moralists, in 
Oriental tales, the envious man is markedly promi- 
nent. In real life, he is the terror of all who possess 
any thing desirable, be it a palace, a handsome child, 
or even good health and spirits : the supposed effect 
of his mere look constitutes the all-pervading supersti- 
tion of the evil eye. Next to Orientals in envy, as in 
inactivity, are some of the Southern Europeans. The 
Spaniards pursued all their great men with it, embit- 
tered their lives, and generally succeeded in putting 
an early stop to their successes.* With the French, 

* I limit the expression to past time, because I would say nothing 



THE IDEALLY BEST POLITY. 73 

who are essentially a Southern people, the double ed- 
ucation of despotism and Catholicism has, in spite of 
their impulsive temperament, made submission and 
endurance the common character of the people, and 
their most received notion of wisdom and excellence ; 
and if envy of one another, and of all superiority, is 
not more rife among them than it is, the circumstance 
must be ascribed to the many valuable counteracting 
elements in the French character, and most of all to 
the great individual energy which, though less per- 
sistent and more intermittent than in the self-helping 
and struggling Anglo-Saxons, has nevertheless mani- 
fested itself among the French in nearly every direc- 
tion in which the operation of their institutions has 
been favorable to it. 

There are, no doubt, in all countries, really content- 
ed characters, who not merely do not seek, but do not 
desire what they do not already possess, and these nat- 
urally bear no ill-will toward such as have apparent- 
ly a more favored lot. But the great mass of seem- 
ing contentment is real discontent, combined with in- 
dolence or self-indulgence, which, while taking no le- 
gitimate means of raising itself, delights in bringing 
others down to its own level. And if we look nar- 
rowly even at the cases of innocent contentment, we 
perceive that they only win our admiration when the 

derogatory of a great, and now at last a free people, who are entering 
into the general movement of European progress with a vigor which 
bids fair to make up rapidly the ground they have lost. No one can 
doubt what Spanish intellect and energy are capable of; and their 
faults as a people are chiefly those for which freedom and industrial 
ardor are a real specific. 

D 



74 REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

indifference is solely to improvement in outward cir- 
cumstances, and there is a striving for perpetual ad- 
vancement in spiritual worth, or at least a disinterest- 
ed zeal to benefit others. The contented man, or the 
contented family, who have no ambition to make any 
one else happier, to promote the good of their coun- 
try or their neighborhood, or to improve themselves in 
moral excellence, excite in us neither admiration nor 
approval. We rightly ascribe this sort of content- 
ment to mere unmanliness and want of spirit. The 
content which we approve is an ability to do cheer- 
fully without what can not be had, a just appreciation 
of the comparative value of different objects of desire, 
and a willing renunciation of the less when incompati- 
ble with the greater. These, however, are excellences 
more natural to the character, in proportion as it is 
actively engaged in the attempt to improve its own 
or some other lot. He who is continually measuring 
his energy against difficulties, learns what are the dif- 
ficulties insuperable to him, and what are those which, 
though he might overcome, the success is not worth 
the cost. He whose thoughts and activities are all 
needed for, and habitually employed in, practicable 
and useful enterprises, is the person of all others least 
likely to let his mind dwell with brooding discontent 
upon things either not worth attaining, or which are 
not so to him. Thus the active, self-helping charac- 
ter is not only intrinsically the best, but is the likeli- 
est to acquire all that is really excellent or desirable 
in the opposite type. 

The striving, go-ahead character of England and 



THE IDEALLY BEST POLITY. 75 

the United States is only a fit subject of disapproving 
criticism on account of the very secondary objects on 
which it commonly expends its strength. In itself it 
is the foundation of the best hopes for the general im- 
provement of mankind. It has been acutely remark- 
ed, that whenever any thing goes amiss, the habitual 
impulse of French people is to say, " II faut de la pa- 
tience ;" and of English people, " What a shame 1" 
The people who think it a shame when any thing 
goes wrong — who rush to the conclusion that the evil 
could and ought to have been prevented, are those 
who, in the long run, do most to make the world bet- 
ter. If the desires are low placed, if they extend to 
little beyond physical comfort and the show of riches, 
the immediate results of the energy will not be much 
more than the continual extension of man's power 
over material objects; but even this makes room, and 
prepares the mechanical appliances for the greatest 
intellectual and social achievements ; and while the 
energy is there, some persons will apply it, and it will 
be applied more and more, to the perfecting, not of 
outward circumstances alone, but of man's inward na- 
ture. Inactivity, unaspiringness, absence of desire, is 
a more fatal hinderance to improvement than any mis- 
direction of energy, and is that through which alone, 
when existing in the mass, any very formidable mis- 
direction by an energetic few becomes possible. It is 
this, mainly, which retains in a savage or semi-savage 
state the great majority of the human race. 

Now there can be no kind of doubt that the passive 
type of character is favored by the government of 



76 REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

one or a few, and the active self-helping type by that 
of the many. Irresponsible rulers need the quies- 
cence of the ruled more than they need any activity 
but that which they can compel. Submissiveness to 
the prescriptions of men as necessities of nature is the 
lesson inculcated by all governments upon those who 
are wholly without participation in them. The will 
of superiors, and the law as the will of superiors, must 
be passively yielded to. But no men are mere in- 
struments or materials in the hands of their rulers 
who have will, or spirit, or a spring of internal activ- 
ity in the rest of their proceedings, and any manifest- 
ation of these qualities, instead of receiving encour- 
agement from despots, has to get itself forgiven by 
them. Even when irresponsible rulers are not suffi- 
ciently conscious of danger from the mental activit}^ 
of their subjects to be desirous of repressing it, the 
position itself is a repression. Endeavor is even more 
effectually restrained by the certainty of its impo- 
tence than by any positive discouragement. Between 
subjection to the will of others and the virtues of self- 
help and self-government there is a natural incompati- 
bility. This is more or less complete according as the 
bondage is strained or relaxed. Eulers differ very 
much in the length to which they carry the control 
of the free agency of their subjects, or the suppression 
of it by managing their business for them. But the 
difference is in degree, not in principle ; and the best 
despots often go the greatest lengths in chaining up 
the free agency of their subjects. A bad despot, when 
his own personal indulgences have been provided for, 



THE IDEALLY l^EST POLITY. 77 

may sometimes be willing to let the people alone; 
but a good despot insists on doing them good by ma- 
king them do their own business in a better way than 
they themselves know of. The regulations which re- 
stricted to fixed processes all the leading branches of 
French manufactures were the work of the great Col- 
bert. 

Yery different is the state of the human faculties 
where a human being feels himself under no other 
external restraint than the necessities of nature, or 
mandates of society which he has his share in impo- 
sing, and which it is open to him, if he thinks them 
wrong, publicly to dissent from, and exert himself 
actively to get altered. ISTo doubt, under a govern- 
ment partially popular, this freedom may be exercised 
even by those who are not partakers in the full privi- 
leges of citizenship ; but it is a great additional stim- 
ulus to any one's self-help and self-reliance when he 
starts from an even ground, and has not to feel that 
his success depends on the impression he can make 
upon the sentiments and dispositions of a body of 
whom he is not one. It is a great discouragement to 
an individual, and a still greater one to a class, to be 
left out of the constitution; to be reduced to plead 
from outside the door to the arbiters of their destiny, 
not taken into the consultation within. The maxi- 
mum of the invigorating effect of freedom upon the 
character is only obtained when the person acted on 
either is, or is looking forward to become, a citizen 
as fully privileged as any other. What is still more 
important than even this matter of feeling is the prac- 



78 REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

tical discipline which the character obtains from the 
occasional demand made upon the citizens to exercise, 
for a time and in their turn, some social function. It 
is not sufficiently considered how little there is in 
most men's ordinary life to give any largeness either 
to their conceptions or to their sentiments. Their 
work is a routine ; not a labor of love, but of self-in- 
terest in the most elementary form, the satisfaction of 
daily wants ; neither the thing done, nor the process 
of doing it, introduces the mind to thoughts or feel- 
ings extending beyond individuals ; if instructive 
books are within their reach, there is no stimulus to 
read them ; and, in most cases, the individual has no 
access to any person of cultivation much superior to 
his own. Giving him something to do for the public 
supplies, in a measure, all these deficiencies. If cir- 
cumstances allow the amount of public duty assigned 
him to be considerable, it makes him an educated 
man. Notwithstanding the defects of the social sys- 
tem and moral ideas of antiquity, the practice of the 
dicastery and the ecclesia raised the intellectual stand- 
ard of an average Athenian citizen far beyond any 
thing of which there is yet an example in any other 
mass of men, ancient or modern. The proofs of this 
are apparent in every page of our great historian of 
Greece; but we need scarcely look farther than to 
the high quality of the addresses which their great 
orators deemed best calculated to act with effect on 
their understanding and will. A benefit of the same 
kind, though far less in degree, is produced on En- 
glishmen of the lower middle class by their liability 



THE IDEALLY BEST POLITY. 79 

to be placed on juries and to serve parish offices, 
which, though it does not occur to so many, nor is 
so continuous, nor introduces them to so great a vari- 
ety of elevated considerations as to admit of compari- 
son with the public education which every citizen of 
Athens obtained from her democratic institutions, 
makes them nevertheless very different beings, h\ 
range of ideas and development of faculties, from 
those who have done nothing in their lives but drive 
a quill, or sell goods over a counter. Still more salu- 
tary is the moral part of the instruction afforded by 
the participation of the private citizen, if even rarely, 
in public functions. He is called upon, while so en- 
gaged, to weigh interests not his own ; to be guided, 
in case of conflicting claims, by another rule than his 
private partialities ; to apply, at every turn, principles 
and maxims which have for their reason of existence 
the general good ; and he usually finds associated 
with him in the same work minds more familiarized 
than his own with these ideas and operations, whose 
study it will be to supply reasons to his understand- 
ing, and stimulation to his feeling for the general 
good. He is made to feel himself one of the public, 
and whatever is their interest to be his interest. 
Where this school of public spirit does not exist, 
scarcely any sense is entertained that private persons, 
in no eminent social situation, owe any duties to soci- 
ety except to obey the laws and submit to the gov- 
ernment. There is no unselfish sentiment of identifi- 
cation with the public. Every thought and feeling, 
either of interest or of duty, is absorbed in the indi- 



80 EEPRESENTATIVE GOVEKNMENT 

vidual and in tlie family. The man never thinks of 
any collective interest, of any objects to be pursued 
jointly with others, but only in competition with 
them, and in some ■ measure at their expense. A 
neighbor, not being an ally or an associate, since he 
is never engaged in any common "undertaking for the 
joint benefit, is therefore only a rival. Thus even 
private morality suffers, while public is actually ex- 
tinct. Were this the universal and only possible 
state of things, the utmost aspirations of the lawgiver 
or the moralist could only stretch to making the bulk 
of the community a flock of sheep innocently nibbling 
the grass side by side. 

From- these accumulated considerations, it is evi- 
dent that the only government which can fully satisfy 
all the exigencies of the social state is one in which 
the whole people participate ; that any participation, 
even in the smallest public function, is useful ; that 
the participation, should every where be as great as 
the general degree of improvement of the community 
will allow ; and that nothing less can be ultimately 
desirable than the admission of all to a share in the 
sovereign power of the state. But since all can not, 
in a community exceeding a single small town, par- 
ticipate personally in any but some very minor por- 
tions of the public business, it follows that the ideal 
type of a perfect government must be representative. 



IN WHAT CASES INAPPLICABLE. 81 



CHAPTER IV. 

UNDER WHAT SOCIAL CONDITIONS REPRESENTATIVE 
GOVERNMENT IS INAPPLICABLE. 

"We have recognized in representative government 
the ideal type of the most perfect polity for which, in 
consequence, any portion of mankind are better adapt- 
ed in proportion to their degree of general improve- 
ment. As they range lower and lower in develop- 
ment, that form of government will be, generally 
speaking, less suitable to them, though this is not 
true universally ; for the adaptation of a people to 
representative government does not depend so much 
upon the place they occupy in the general scale of 
humanity as upon the degree in which they possess 
certain special requisites ; requisites, however, so 
closely connected with their degree of general ad- 
vancement, that any variation between the two is 
rather the exception than the rule. Let us examine 
at what point in the descending series representative 
government ceases altogether to be admissible, either 
through its own unfitness or the superior fitness of 
some other regimen. 

First, then, representative, like any other govern- 
ment, must be unsuitable in any case in which it can 
not permanently subsist — i. e., in which it does not 
fulfill the three fundamental conditions enumerated 

D2 



82 REPKESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

in the first chapter. These were, 1. That the people 
should be willing to receive it. 2. That thej should 
be willing and able to do what is necessary for its 
preservation. 8. That they should be willing and 
able to fulfill the duties and discharge the functions 
which it imposes on them. 

The willingness of the people to accept representa- 
tive government only becomes a practical question 
when an enlightened ruler, or a foreign nation or na- 
tions who have gained power over the country, are 
disposed to offer it the boon. To individual reform- 
ers the question is almost irrelevant, since, if no other 
obijection can be made to their enterprise than that 
the opinion of the nation is not yet on their side, they 
have the ready and proper answer, that to bring it 
over to their side is the very end they aim at. When 
opinion is really adverse, its hostility is- usually to the 
fact of change rather than to representative govern- 
ment in itself The contrary case is not indeed unex- 
ampled ; there has sometimes been a religious repug- 
nance to any limitation of the power of a particular 
line of rulers ; but, in general, the doctrine of passive 
obedience meant only submission to the will of the 
powers that be, whether monarchical or popular. In 
any case in which the attempt to introduce represent- 
ative government is at all likely to be made, indiffer- 
ence to it, and inability to understand its processes 
and requirements, rather than positive opposition, are 
the obstacles to be expected. These, however, are as 
fatal, and may be as hard to be got rid of as actual 
aversion ; it being easier, in most cases, to change the 



IN WHAT CASES INAPPLICABLE. 83 

direction of an active feeling than to create one in a 
state previously passive. When a people have no 
sufficient value for, and attachment to, a representa- 
tive constitution, they have next to no chance of re- 
taining it. In every country, the executive is the 
branch of the government which wields the immediate 
power, and is in direct contact w4th the public ; to it, 
principally, the hopes and fears of individuals are di- 
rected, and by it both the benefits, and the terrors, and 
prestige of government are mainly represented to the 
public eye. Unless, therefore, the authorities whose 
office it is to check the executive are backed by an 
effective opinion and feeling in the country, the ex- 
ecutive has always the means of setting them aside 
or compelling them to subservience, and is sure to be 
well supported in doing so. Representative institu- 
tions necessarily depend for permanence upon the 
readiness of the people to fight for them in case of 
their being endangered. If too little valued for this, 
they seldom obtain a footing at all, and if they do, 
are almost sure to be overthrown as soon as the head 
of the government, or any party leader who can mus- 
ter force for a coup de main, is willing to run some 
small risk for absolute power. 

These considerations relate to the two first causes 
of failure in a representative government. The third 
is when the people want either the will or the capac- 
ity to fulfill the part which belongs to them in a rep- 
resentative constitution. When nobody, or only some 
small fraction, feels the degree of interest in the gen- 
eral affairs of the state necessary to the formation of 



84 REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

a public opinion, the electors will seldom make any 
use of the right of the suffrage but to serve their 
private interest, or the interest of their locality, or of 
some one with whom they are connected as adherents 
or dependents. The small class who, in this state of 
public feeling, gain the command of the representa- 
tive body, for the most part use it solely as a means of 
seeking their fortune. If the executive is weak, the 
country is distracted by mere struggles for place ; if 
strong, it makes itself despotic, at the cheap price of 
appeasing the representatives, or such of them as are 
capable of giving trouble, by a share of the spoil ; and 
the only fruit produced by national representation is, 
that in addition to those who really govern, there is 
an assembly quartered on the public, and no abuse in 
which a portion of the assembly are interested is at all 
likely to be removed. When, however, the evil stops 
here, the price may be worth paying for the publicity 
and discussion which, though not an invariable, are a 
natural accompaniment of anj^, even nominal, repre- 
sentation. In the modern kingdom of Greece, for ex- 
ample, it can hardly be doubted that the place-hunt- 
ers who chiefly compose the representative assembl}^, 
though they contribute little or nothing directly to 
good government, nor even much temper the arbitrary 
power of the executive, yet keep up the idea of pop- 
ular rights, and conduce greatly to the real liberty of 
the press which exists in that country. This benefit, 
however, is entirely dependent on the coexistence 
with the popular body of an hereditary king. If, in- 
stead of struggling for the favors of the chief ruler, 



IN WHAT CASES INAPPLICABLE. 85 

these selfish and sordid factions struggled for the chief 
place itself, they would certainly, as in Spanish Amer- 
ica, keep the countr}^ in a state of chronic revolution 
and civil war. A despotism, not even legal, but of 
illegal violence, would be alternately exercised by a 
succession of political adventurers, and the name and 
forms of representation would have no effect but to 
prevent despotism from attaining the stability and se- 
curity by which alone its evils can be mitigated or its 
few advantages realized, j 

The preceding are the cases in which representative 
government can not permanently exist. There are 
others in which it possibly might exist, but in which 
some other form of government would be preferable. 
These are principally when the people, in order to 
advance in civilization, have some lesson to learn, 
some habit not yet acquired, to the acquisition of 
which representative government is likely to be an 
impediment. 

The most obvious of these cases is the one already 
considered, in which the people have still to learn the 
first lesson of civilization, that of obedience. A race 
who have been trained in energy and courage by 
struggles with Nature and their neighbors, but who 
have not yet settled down into permanent obedience 
to any common superior, would be little likely to ac- 
quire this habit under the collective government of 
their own body. A representative assembly drawn 
from among themselves would simply reflect their 
own turbulent insubordination. It would refuse its 
authority to all proceedings which would impose, on 



86 KEPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

their savage independence, any improving restraint 
The mode in which such tribes are usually brought 
to submit to the primary conditions of civilized so- 
ciety is through the necessities of warfare, and the 
despotic authority indispensable to military command. 
A military leader is the only superior to whom they 
will submit, except occasionally some prophet sup- 
posed to be inspired from above, or conjuror regarded 
as possessing miraculous power. These may exercise 
a temporary ascendency, but as it is merely personal, 
it rarely effects any change in the general habits of 
the people, unless the prophet, like Mohammed, is also 
a military chief, and goes forth the armed apostle of 
a new religion ; or unless the military chiefs ally them- 
selves with his influence, and turn it into a prop for 
their ov/n government. 

A people are no less unfitted for representative 
government by the contrary fault' to that last speci- 
fied — by extreme passiveness, and ready submission 
to tyranny. If a people thus prostrated by character 
and circumstances could obtain representative institu- 
tions, they would inevitably choose their tyrants as 
their representatives, and the yoke would be made 
heavier on them by the contrivance which ^nma/aae 
might be expected to lighten it. On the contrary, 
many a people has gradually emerged from this con- 
dition by the aid of a central authority, whose posi- 
tion has made it the rival, and has ended by making 
it the master, of the local despots, and which, above 
al], has been single. French history, from Hugh Ca- 
pet to Richelieu and Louis XIV., is a continued ex- 



IN WHAT CASES INAPPLICABLE. bi 

ample of this course of things. Even when the king 
was scarcely so powerful as many, of his chief feuda- 
tories, the great advantage which he derived from be- 
ing but one has been recognized by French historians. 
To him the eyes of all the locally oppressed were turn- 
ed ; he was the object of hope and reliance through- 
out the kingdom, while each local potentate was only 
powerful within a more or less confined space. At 
his hands, refuge and protection were sought from 
every part of the country against first one, then an- 
other of the immediate oppressors. His progress to 
ascendency was slow, but it resulted from successively 
taking advantage of opportunities which offered them- 
selves only to him. It was, therefore, sure ; and, in 
proportion as it was accomplished, it abated, in the 
oppressed portion of the community, the habit of sub- 
mitting to oppression. The king's interest lay in en- 
couraging all partial attempts on the part of the serfs 
to emancipate themselves from their masters, and place 
themselves in immediate subordination to himself 
Under his protection numerous communities were 
formed which knew no one above them but the king. 
Obedience to a distant monarch is liberty itself com- 
pared with the dominion of the lord of the neighbor- 
ing castle ; and the monarch was long compelled by 
necessities of position to exert his authority as the 
ally rather than the master of the classes w^hom he 
had aided in effecting their liberation. In this man- 
ner a central power, despotic in principle, though gen- 
erally much restricted in practice, was mainly instru- 
mental in carrying the people through a necessary 



88 REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

stage of improvement, whicb. representative govern- 
ment, if real, would most likely have prevented them 
from entering upon. There are parts of Europe where 
the same work is still to be done, and no prospect of 
its being done by any other means. Nothing short 
of despotic rule or a general massacre could effect the 
emancipation of the serfs in the Eussian Empire. 

The same passages of history forcibly illustrate an- 
other mode in which unlimited monarchy overcomes 
obstacles to the progress of civilization which repre- 
sentative government would have had a decided tend- 
ency to aggravate. One of the strongest hinderan- 
ces to improvement, up to a rather advanced stage, 
is an inveterate spirit of locality. Portions of man- 
kind, in many other respects capable of, and prepared 
«^ for freedom, may be unqualified for amalgamating into 
even the smallest nation. Not only may jealousies 
and antipathies repel them from one another, and bar 
all possibility of voluntary union, but they may not 
yet have acquired any of the feelings or habits which 
would make the union real, supposing it to be nomi- 
nally accomplished. They may, like the citizens of 
an ancient communit}^, or those of an Asiatic village, 
have had considerable practice in exercising their 
faculties on village or town interests, and have even 
realized a tolerably effective popular government on 
that restricted scale, and may yet have but slender 
sympathies with any thing beyond, and no habit or 
capacity of dealing with interests common to many 
such communities. I am not aware that history fur- 
nishes any example in which a number of these po- 



IN WHAT CASES INAPPLICABLE. 89 

litical atoms or corpuscles have coalesced into a body, 
and learned to feel themselves one people, except 
through previous subjection to a central authority 
common to all.* It is through the habit of deferring 
to that authority, entering into its plans and subserv- 
ing its purposes, that a people such as we have sup- 
posed receive into their minds the conception of large 
interests common to a considerable geographical ex- 
tent. Such interests, on the contrary, are necessarily 
the predominant consideration in the mind of the cen- 
tral ruler; and through the relations, more or less 
intimate, which he progressively establishes with the 
localities, they become familiar to the general mind. 
The most favorable concurrence of circumstances un- 
der which this step in improvement could be made 
would be one which should raise up representative 
institutions without representative government ; a rep- 
resentative body or bodies, drawn from the localities, 
making itself the auxiliary and instrument of the cen- 
tral power, but seldom attempting to thwart or con- 
trol it. The people being thus taken, as it were, into 
council, though not sharing the supreme power, the 
political education given by the central authority is 
carried home, much more effectually than it could 
otherwise be, to the local chiefs and to the population 
generally, while, at the same time, a tradition is kept 

* Italy, which alone can be quoted as an exception, is only so in 
regard to the final stage of its transformation. The more difficult 
previous advance from the city isolation of Florence, Pisa, or Milan, 
to the provincial unity of Tuscany or Lombardy, took place in the 
usual manner. 



yO REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

up of government by general consent, or, at least, the 
sanction of tradition is not given to government with- 
out it, which, when consecrated by custom, has so oft- 
en put a bad end to a good beginning, and is one of 
the most frequent cases of the sad fatality w^hich in 
most countries has stopped improvement in so early 
a stage, because the work of some one period has been 
so done as to bar the needful work of the ages follow- 
ing. Meanwhile, it may be laid down as a political 
truth, that by irresponsible monarchy rather than by 
representative government can a multitude of insig- 
nificant political units be welded into a people, with 
common feelings of cohesion, power enough to protect 
itself against conquest or foreign aggression, and affairs 
sufficiently various and considerable of its own to oc- 
cupy worthily and expand to fit proportions the social 
and political intelligence of the population. 

For these several reasons, kingly government, free 
from the control (though perhaps strengthened by the 
support) of representative institutions, is the most suit- 
able form of polity for the earliest stages of any com- 
munity, not excepting a city community like those of 
ancient Greece ; where, accordingly, the government 
of kings, under some real, but no ostensible or consti- 
tutional control by public opinion, did historicaWy pre- 
cede by an unknown and probably great duration all 
free institutions, and gave place at last, during a con- 
siderable lapse of time, to oligarchies of a few families. 

A hundred other infirmities or shortcomings in a 
people might be pointed out which pro tanto disqual- 
ify them froTO making the best use of representative 



IN .WHAT CASES INAPPLICABLE. 91 

government ; but in regard to these it is not equally 
obvious that the government of One or a Few would 
have any tendency to cure or alleviate the evil. Strong 
prejudices of any kind ; obstinate adherence to old 
habits ; positive defects of national character, or mere 
ignorance, and deficiency of mental cultivation, if prev- 
alent in a people, will be in general faithfully reflect- 
ed in their representative assemblies ; and should it 
happen that the executive administration, the direct 
management of public affairs, is in the hands of per- 
sons comparatively free from these defects, more good 
would frequently be done by them when not hamper- 
ed by the necessity of carrying with them the volun- 
tary assent of such bodies. But the mere position of 
the rulers does not in these, as it does in the other 
cases which we have examined, of itself invest them 
with interests and tendencies operating in the bene- 
ficial direction. From the general weaknesses of the 
people or of the state of civilization, the One and his 
counselors, or the Few, are not likely to be habitually 
exempt, except in the case of their being foreigners, 
belonging to a superior people or a more advanced 
state of society. Then, indeed, the rulers may be, to 
almost any extent, superior in civilization to those 
over whom they rule ; and subjection to a foreign 
government of this description, notwithstanding its in- 
evitable evils, is often of the greatest advantage to a 
people, carrying them rapidly through several stages 
of progress, and clearing away obstacles to improve- 
ment which might have lasted indefinitely if the sub- 
ject population had been left unassisted to its native 



92 REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

tendencies and chances. In a country not under the 
dominion of foreigners, the only cause adequate to pro- 
ducing similar benefits is the rare accident of a mon- 
arch of extraordinary genius. There have been in 
history a few of these who, happily for humanity, have 
reigned long enough to render some of their improve- 
ments permanent, by leaving them under the guard- 
ianship of a generation which had grown up under 
their influence. Charlemagne may be cited as one in- 
stance; Peter the Great is another. Such e2famples, 
however, are so unfrequent that they can €>nly be 
classed with the happy accidents which have so often 
decided at a critical moment whether some leading 
portion of humanity should make a sudden start, or 
sink back toward barbarism — chances like the exist- 
ence of Themistocles at the time of the Persian inva- 
sion, or of the first or third William of Orange. It 
would be absurd to construct institutions for the mere 
purpose of taking advantage of such possibilities, es- 
pecially as men of this calibre, in any distinguished 
position, do not require despotic power to enable them 
to exert great influence, as is evidenced by the three 
last mentioned. The case most requiring considera- 
tion in reference to institutions is the not very uncom- 
mon one in which a small but leading portion of the 
population, from difference of race, more civilized ori- 
gin, or other peculiarities of circumstance, are mark- 
edly superior in civilization and general character to 
the remainder. Under these conditions, government 
by the representatives of the mass would stand a 
chance of depriving them of much of the benefit they 



IN WHAT CASP:S INAPPLICABLE. 93 

might derive from the greater civilization of the supe- 
rior ranks, while government by the representatives 
of those ranks would probably rivet the degradation 
of the multitude, and leave them no hope of decent 
treatment except by ridding themselves of one of the 
most valuable elements of future advancement. The 
best prospect of improvement for a people thus com- 
posed lies in the existence of a constitutionally unlim- 
ited, or at least a practically preponderant authority 
in the chief ruler of the dominant class. He alone has 
by his position an interest in raising and improving 
the mass, of whom he is not jealous, as a counterpoise 
to his associates, of whom he is ; and if fortunate cir- 
cumstances place beside him, not as controllers, but 
as subordinates, a body representative of the superior 
caste, which, by its objections and questionings, and its 
occasional outbreaks of spirit, keeps alive habits of col- 
lective resistance, and may admit of being, in time and 
by degrees, expanded into a really national represent- 
ation (which is in substance the history of the English 
Parliament), the nation has then the most favorable 
prospects of improvement which can well occur to a 
community thus circumstanced and constituted. 

Among the tendencies which, without absolutely 
rendering a people unfit for representative govern- 
ment, seriously incapacitate them from reaping the full 
benefit of it, one deserves particular notice. There 
are two states of the inclinations, intrinsically very 
different, but which have something in common, by 
virtue of which they often coincide in the direction 
they give to the efforts of individuals and of nations ; 



94 REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 

one is, the desire to exercise power over others ; the 
other is disinclination to have power exercised over 
themselves. The difference between different portions 
of mankind in the relative strength of these two dis- 
positions is one of the most important elements in 
their history. There are nations in whom the passion 
for governing others is so much stronger than the de- 
sire of personal independence, that foi- the mere shad- 
ow of the one they are found ready to sacrifice the 
whole of the other. Each one of their number is 
willing, like the private soldier in an army, to abdi- 
cate his personal freedom of action into the hands of 
his general, provided the army is triumphant and vic- 
torious, and he is able to flatter himself that he is one 
of a conquering host, though the notion that he has 
himself any share in the domination exercised over 
the conquered is an illusion. 'iA. government strictly 
limited in its powers and attributions, required to hold 
its hands from overmeddling, and to let most things 
go on without its assuming the part of guardian or 
director, is not to the taste of such a people ; in their 
eyes the possessors of authority can hardly take too 
much upon themselves, provided the authority itself 
is open to general competition. An average individ- 
ual among them prefers the chance, however distant 
or improbable, of wielding some share of power over 
his fellow-citizens, above the certainty, to himself and 
others, of having no unnecessary power exercised over 
them. These are the elements of a people of place- 
hunters, in whom the course of politics is mainly de- 
termined by place-hunting; where equality alone is 



IN WHAT CASES INAPPLICABLE, 95 

cared for, but not liberty ; where the contests of po- 
litical parties are but struggles to decide whether the 
power of meddling in every thing shall belong to one 
class or another, perhaps merely to one knot of public 
men or another; where the idea entertained of de- 
mocracy is merely that of opening offices to the com- 
petition of all instead of a few ; where, the more pop- 
ular the institutions, the more innumerable are the 
places created, and the more monstrous the overgov- 
ernment exercised by all over each, and by the exec- 
utive over all. It would be as unjust as it w^ould be 
ungenerous to offer this, or any thing approaching to 
it, as an unexaggerated picture of the French people ; 
3^et the degree in which they do participate in this 
type of character has caused representative govern- 
ment by a limited class to break down by excess of 
corruption, and the attempt at representative govern- 
ment by the whole male population to end in giving 
one man the power of consigning any number of the 
rest, without trial, to Lambessa or Cayenne, j:)rovided 
he allows all of them to think themselves not ex- 
cluded from the possibility of sharing his favors. 
The point of character which, beyond any other, fits 
the people of this country for representative govern- 
ment, is that they have almost universally the con- 
trary characteristic. They are very jealous of any 
attempt to exercise power over them not sanctioned 
by long usage and by their own opinion of right, but 
they in general care very little for the exercise of 
power over others. ISTot having the smallest sympa- 
thy with the passion for governing, while they are but 
too wrll c.oqnainted vn'th the motives of private inter- 



96 

est from which that office is sought, they prefer that it 
should be performed by those to whom it comes with- 
out seeking, as a consequence of social position. If 
foreigners understood this, it would account to them 
for some of the apparent contradictions in the politi- 
cal feelings of Englishmen ; their unhesitating readi- 
ness to let themselves be governed by the higher 
classes, coupled with so little personal subservience to 
them, that no people are so fond of resisting authority 
when it oversteps certain prescribed limits, or so de- 
termined to make their rulers always remember that 
they will only be governed in the way they them- 
selves like best. Place-hunting, accordingly, is a form 
of ambition to which the English, considered nation- 
ally, are almost strangers. If we except the few fam- 
ilies or connections of whom official employment lies 
directly in the way, Englishmen's views of advance- 
ment in life take an altogether different direction — - 
that of success in business or in a profession. They 
have the strongest distaste for any mere struggle for 
office by political parties or individuals; and there 
are few things to which they have a greater aversion 
than to the multiplication of public employments ; a 
thing, on the contrary, always popular with the bu- 
reaucracy-ridden nations of the Continent, who would 
rather pay higher taxes than diminish, by the small- 
est fraction, their individual chances of a place for 
themselves or their relatives, and among whom a cry 
for retrenchment never means abolition of offices, but 
the reduction of the salaries of those which are too 
considerable for the ordinary citizen to have any 
chance of being appointed to them. 



FUNCTIONS OF REPEESENTATIVE BODIES. 97 



CHAPTER V. 

OF THE PROPER FUNCTIONS OF REPRESENTATIVE 
BODIES. 

In treating of representative government, it is above 
all necessary to keep in view the distinction between 
its idea or essence, and tlie particular forms in which 
the idea has been clothed by accidental historical de- 
velopments, or by the notions current at some partic- 
ular period. 

The meaning of representative government is, that 
the whole people, or some numerous portion of them, 
exercise, through deputies periodically elected by them- 
selves, the ultimate controlling power, which, in every 
constitution, must reside somewhere. This ultimate 
power they must possess in all its completeness. They 
must be masters, whenever they please, of all the op- 
erations of governrnxcnt. There is no need that the 
constitutional law should itself give them this mas- 
tery. It does not in the British Constitution. But 
what it does give practically amounts to this: the 
power of final control is as essentially single, in a mix- 
ed and balanced government, as in a pure monarchy 
or democracy. This is the portion of truth in the 
opinion of the ancients, revived by great authorities 
in our own time, that a balanced constitution is im- 
possible. There is almost always a balance, but the 

E 



yb PROPER FUNCTIONS OF 

scales never hang exactly even. Which of them pre- 
ponderates is not always apparent on the face of the 
political institutions. In the British Constitution, each 
of the three co-ordinate members of the sovereignty is 
invested with powers which, if fully exercised, would 
enable it to stop all the machinery of government. 
Nominally, therefore, each is invested with equal pow- 
er of thwarting and obstructing the others ; and if, by 
exerting that power, any of the three could hope to 
better its position, the ordinary course of human af- 
fairs forbids us to doubt that the power would be ex- 
ercised. There can be no question that the full pow- 
ers of each would be employed defensively, if it found 
itself assailed by one or both of the others. What, 
then, prevents the same powers from being exerted 
aggressively ? The unwritten maxims of the Consti- 
tution — in other words, the positive political morality 
of the country ; and this positive political morality is 
wh-at we must look to if we would know in whom the 
really supreme power in the Constitution resides. 

By constitutional law, the crown can refuse its as- 
sent to any act of Parliament, and can appoint to of- 
fice and maintain in it any minister, in opposition to 
the remonstrances of Parliament. But the constitu- 
tional morality of the country nullifies these powers, 
preventing them from being ever used ; and, by re- 
quiring that the head of the administration should al- 
ways be virtually appointed by the House of Com- 
mons, makes that body the real sovereign of the state. 

These unwritten rules, which limit the use of law- 
ful powers, are, however, only effectual, and maintain 



REPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 99 

themselves in existence on condition of harmonizing 
with the actual distribution of real political strength. 
There is in every constitution a strongest power — one 
which would gain the victory if the compromises by 
which the Constitution habitually works were sus- 
pended, and there came a trial of strength. Constitu- 
tional maxims are adhered to, and are practically op- 
erative, so long as they give the predominance in the 
Constitution to that one of the powers which has the 
preponderance of active power out of doors. This, in 
England, is the popular power. If, therefore, the le- 
gal provisions of the British Constitution, together 
with the unwritten maxims by which the conduct of 
the different political authorities is in fact regulated, 
did not give to the popular element in the Constitu- 
tion that substantial supremacy over every depart- 
ment of the government which corresponds to its real 
power in the country, the Constitution would not pos- 
sess the stability which characterizes it; either the 
laws or the unwritten maxims would soon have to be 
changed. The British government is thus a repre- 
sentative government in the correct sense of the term ; 
and the powers which it leaves in hands not directly 
accountable to the people can only be considered as 
precautions which the ruling power is willing should 
be taken against its own errors. Such precautions 
have existed in all well-constructed democracies. The 
Athenian Constitution had many such provisions, and 
so has that of the United States. 

But while it is essential to representative govern- 
ment that the practical supremacy in the state should 



100 PROPER FUNCTIONS OF 

reside in tlie representatives of the people, it is an 
open question what actual functions, what precise part 
in the machinery of government, shall be directly and 
personally discharged ' by the representative body. 
Great varieties in this respect are compatible with 
the essence of representative government, provided 
the functions are such as secure to the representative 
body the control of every thing in the last resort. 

There is a radical tiistinction between controlling 
the business of government and actually doing it. 
The same person or body may be able to control ev- 
ery thing, but can not possibly do every thing ; and 
in many cases its control over every thing will be 
more perfect the less it personally attempts to do. 
The commander of an army could not direct its move- 
ments so effectually if he himself fought in the ranks 
or led an assault. It is the same with bodies of m^en. 
Some things can not be done except by bodies ; other 
things can not be well done by them. It is one ques- 
tion, therefore, what a popular assembly should con- 
trol, another what it should itself do. It should, as 
we have already seen, control all the operations of 
government. But, in order to determine through 
what channel this general control may most expedi- 
ently be exercised, and what portion of the business 
of government the representative assembly should 
hold in its own hands, it is necessary to consider what 
kinds of business a numerous body is competent to 
perform properly. That alone which it can do well 
it ought to take personally upon itself With regard 
to the rest, its proper province is not to do it, but to 
take means for having it well done by others. 



REPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 101 

For example, the duty which is considered as be- 
longing more peculiarly than any other to an assem- 
bly representative of the people is that of voting the 
taxes. Nevertheless, in no country does the repre- 
sentative body undertake, by itself or its delegated of- 
ficers, to prepare the estimates. Though the supplies 
can only be voted by the House of Commons, and 
though the sanction of the House is also required for 
the appropriation of the revenues to the different 
items of the public expenditure, it is the maxim and 
the uniform practice of the Constitution that money 
can be granted only on the proposition of the crown. 
It has, no doubt, been felt that moderation as to the 
amount, and care and judgment in the detail of its 
application, can only be expected when the executive 
government, through whose hands it is to pass, is 
made responsible for the plans and calculations on 
which the disbursements are grounded. Parliament, 
accordingly, is not expected, nor even permitted, to 
originate directly either taxation or expenditure. All 
it is asked for is its consent, and the sole power it pos- 
sesses is that of refusal. 

The principles which are involved and recognized 
in this constitutional doctrine, if followed as far as 
they will go, are a guide to the limitation and defini- 
tion of the general functions of representative assem- 
blies. In the first place, it is admitted in all countries 
in which the representative system is practically un- 
derstood, that numerous representative bodies ought 
not to administer. The maxim is grounded not only 
on the most essential principles of good government, 



102 PROPER FUNCTIONS OF 

but on those of the successful conduct of business of 
any description. E"o body of men, unless organized 
and under command, is fit for action, in the proper 
sense. Even a select board, composed of few mem- 
bers, and these specially conversant with the business 
to be done, is always an inferior instrument to some 
one individual who could be found among them, and 
would be improved in character if that one person 
were made the chief, and all the others reduced to 
subordinates. »What can be done better by a body 
than by any individual is deliberation. When it is 
necessary or important to secure hearing and consid- 
eration to many conflicting opinions, a deliberative 
body is indispensable. Those bodies, therefore, are 
frequently useful, even for administrative business, 
but in general only as advisers ; such business being, 
as a rule, better conducted under the responsibility of 
one. Even a joint-stock company has always in prac- 
tice, if not in theory, a managing director ; its good 
or bad management depends essentially on some one 
person's qualifications, and the remaining directors, 
when of any use, are so by their suggestions to him, 
or by the power they possess of watching him, and 
restraining or removing him in case of misconduct. 
That they are ostensibly equal sharers with him in 
the management is no advantage, but a considerable 
set-off against any good which they are capable of 
doing: it weakens greatly the sense in his own mind, 
and in those of other people, of that individual re- 
sponsibility in which he should stand forth personal- 
ly and undividedly. 



REPEESENTATIVE BODIES. 103 

But a popular assembly is still less fitted to admin- 
ister, or to dictate in detail to those who have the 
charge of administration. Even when honestly meant, 
the interference is almost always injurious. Every 
branch of public administration is a skilled business, 
which has its own peculiar principles and traditional 
rules, many of them not even known in any effectual 
way except to those who have at some time had a 
hand in carrying on the business, and none of them 
likely to be duly appreciated by pereons not practi- 
cally acquainted with the department. I do not mean 
that the transaction of public business has esoteric 
mysteries, only to be understood by the initiated. 
Its principles are all intelligible to any person of good 
sense, who has in his mind a true picture of the cir- 
cumstances and conditions to be dealt with; but to 
have this, he must know those circumstances and con- 
ditions ; and the knowledge does not come by intui- 
tion. There are many rules of the greatest import- 
ance in every branch of public business (as there are 
in every private occupation), of which a person fresh 
to the subject neither knows the reason nor even sus- 
pects the existence, because they are intended to meet 
dangers or provide against inconveniences which nev- 
er entered into his thoughts. I have known public 
men, ministers of more than ordinary mental capacity, 
who, on their first introduction to a department of busi- 
ness new to them, have excited the mirth of their infe- 
riors by the air with which they announced as a truth 
hitherto set at naught, and brought to light by them- 
selves, something which was probably the first thought 



104 PROPER FUNCTIONS OF 

of every body who ever looked at the subject, given 
up as soon as he had got on to a second. It is true 
that a great statesman is he who knows when to de- 
part from traditions, as well as when to adhere to 
them ; but it is a great mistake to suppose that he 
will do this better for being ignorant of the traditions. 
No one who does not thoroughly know the modes of 
action which common experience has sanctioned is 
capable of judging of the circumstances which re- 
quire a departure from those ordinary modes of ac- 
tion. The interests dependent on the acts done by a 
public department, the consequences liable to follow 
from any particular mode of conducting it, require 
for weighing and estimating them a kind of knowl- 
edge, and of specially exercised judgment, almost as 
rarely found in those not bred to it, as the capacity 
to reform the law in those who have not profession- 
ally studied it. All these difficulties are sure to be 
ignored by a representative assembly which attempts 
to decide on special acts of administration. At its 
best, it is inexperience sitting in judgment on experi- 
ence, ignorance on knowledge ; ignorance which, nev- 
er suspecting the existence of what it does not know, 
is equally careless and supercilious, making light of, 
if not resenting, all pretensions to have a judgment 
better worth attending to than its own. Thus it is 
when no interested motives intervene ; but when they 
do, the result is jobbery more unblushing and auda- 
cious than the worst corruption which can well take 
place in a public office under a government of pub- 
licity. It is not necessary that the interested bias 



EEPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 105 

should extend to the majority of the assembly. In 
any particular case it is often enough that it affects 
two or three of their number. Those two or three 
will have a greater interest in misleading the body 
than any other of its members are likely to have in 
putting it right. The bulk of the assembly may keep 
their hands clean, but they can not keep their minds 
vigilant or their judgments discerning in matters 
they know nothing about; and an indolent majority, 
like an indolent individual, belongs to the person who 
takes most pains with it. The bad measures or bad 
appointments of a minister may be checked by Par- 
liament ; and the interests of ministers in defending, 
and of rival partisans in attacking, secure a tolerably 
equal discussion ; but quis custodiet cusiodes f who shall 
check the Parliament ? A minister, a head of an of- 
fice, feels himself under some responsibility. An as- 
sembly in such cases feels under no responsibility at 
all ; for when did any member of Parliament lose his 
seat for the vote he gave on any detail of administra- 
tion ? To a minister, or the head of an office, it is of 
more importance what will be thought of his proceed- 
ings some time hence, than what is thought of them 
at the instant ; but an assembly, if the cry of the mo- 
ment goes with it, however hastily raised or artificial- 
ly stirred up, thinks itself, and is thought by every 
body, to be completely exculpated, however disas- 
trous may be the consequences. Besides, an assembly 
never personally experiences the inconveniences of 
its bad measures until they have reached the dimen- 
sions of national evils. Ministers and administrators 
E2 



106 PROPER FUNCTIONS OF 

see tliem approacliing, and have to bear all the annoy- 
ance and trouble of attempting to ward them off. 

The proper duty of a representative assembly in 
regard to matters of administration is not to decide 
them by its own vote, but to take care that the persons 
who have to decide them shall be the proper persons. 
Even this they can not advantageously do by nomi- 
nating the individuals. There is no act which more 
imperatively requires to be performed under a strong 
sense of individual responsibility than the nomina- 
tion to employments. The experience of every per- 
son conversant with public affairs bears out the asser- 
tion that there is scarcely any act respecting which the 
conscience of an average man is less sensitive ; scarce- 
ly any case in which less consideration is paid to quali- 
fications, partly because men do not know, and partly 
because they do not care for, the difference in quali- 
fications between one person and another. When a 
minister makes what is meant to be an honest appoint- 
ment, that is, when he does not actually job it for his 
personal connections or his party, an ignorant person 
might suppose that he would try to give it to the 
person best qualified. E"o such thing. An ordinary 
minister thinks himself a miracle of virtue if he gives 
it to a person of merit, or who has a claim on the 
public on any account, though the claim or the merit 
may be of the most opposite description to that re- 
quired. Ilfallait un cahulateur^ ce fut un danseur qui 
fobtin% is hardly more of a caricature than in the days 
of Figaro ; and the minister doubtless thinks himself 
not only blameless, but meritorious, if the man dances 



BEPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 107 

well. Besides, the qualifications which fit special in- 
dividuals for special duties can only be recognized by 
those who know the individuals, or who make it their 
business to examine and judge of persons from what 
they have done, or from the evidence of those who 
are in a position to judge. When these conscientious 
obligations are so little regarded by great public offi- 
cers who can be made responsible for their appoint- 
ments, how must it be with assemblies who can not ? 
Even now, the worst appointments are those which 
are made for the sake of gaining support or disarm- 
ing opposition in the representative body ; what might 
we expect if they were made by the body itself? Nu- 
merous bodies never regard special qualifications at 
all. Unless a man is fit for the gallows, he is thought 
to be about as fit as other people for almost any thing 
for which he can offer himself as a candidate. When 
appointments made by a popular body are not decided, 
as they almost always are, by party connection or pri- 
vate jobbing, a man is appointed either because he has 
a reputation, often quite undeserved, for general abil- 
ity, or oftener for no better reason than that he is per- 
sonally popular. 

It has never been thought desirable that Parlia- 
ment should itself nominate even the members of a 
cabinet. It is enough that it virtually decides who 
shall be prime minister, or who shall be the two or 
three individuals from whom the prime minister shall 
be chosen. In doing this, it merely recognizes the 
fact that a certain person is the candidate of the party 
whose general policy commands its support. In real- 



108 PROPER FUNCTIONS OF 

ity, the only thing which Parliament decides is, which 
of two, or at most three, parties or bodies of men shall 
furnish the executive government : the opinion of the 
party itself decides which of its members is fittest to 
be placed at the head. According to the existing 
practice of the British Constitution, these things seem 
to be on as good a footing as they can be. Parlia- 
ment does not nominate any minister, but the crown 
appoints the head of the administration in conformity 
to the general wishes and inclinations manifested by 
Parliament, and the other ministers on the recommend- 
ation of the chief, while every minister has the nn- 
divided moral responsibility of appointing fit persons 
to the other ofiices of administration which are not 
permanent. In a republic, some other management 
would be necessary ; but the nearer it approached in 
practice to that which has long existed in England, 
the more likely it would be to work well. Either, as 
in the American republic, the head of the executive 
must be elected by some agency entirely independent 
of the representative bodj^, or the body must content 
itself with naming the prime minister, and making 
him responsible for the choice of his associates and 
subordinates. In all these considerations, at least the- 
oretically, I fully anticipate a general assent; though, 
practically, the tendency is strong in representative 
bodies to interfere more and more in the details of 
administration, by virtue of the general law, that who- 
ever has the strongest power is more and more tempt- 
ed to make an excessive use of it ; and this is one of 
the practical dangers to which the futurity of repre- 
sentative governments will be exposed. 



REPKESENTATIVE BODIES. 109 

But it is equally true, though only of late and slow- 
ly beginning to be acknowledged, that a numerous 
assembly is as little fitted for the direct business of 
legislation as for that of administration. There is 
hardly any kind of intellectual work which so much 
needs to be done not only by experienced and exer- . 
cised minds, but by minds trained to the task through 
long and laborious study, as tlje business of making 
laws. This is a sufficient reason, were there no other, 
why they can never be well made but by a committee 
of very few persons. A reason no less conclusive is, 
that every provision of a law requires to be framed 
with the most accurate and long-sighted perception 
of its effect on all the other provisions ; and the law, 
when made, should be capable of fitting into a con- 
sistent whole with the previously existing laws. It 
is impossible that these conditions should be in any 
degree fulfilled when laws are voted clause by clause 
in a miscellaneous assembly. The incongruity of such 
a mode of legislating would strike all minds, were it 
not that our laws are alread}^, as to form and construc- 
tion, such a chaos, that the confusion and contradic- 
tion seem incapable of being made greater by any ad- 
dition to the mass. Yet even now, the utter unfitness 
of our legislative machiner}^ for its purpose is making 
itself practically felt every jenr more and more. The 
mere time necessarily occupied in getting through 
bills, renders Parliament more and more incapable of 
passing an}^, except on detached and narrow points. 
If a bill is prepared which even attempts to deal with 
the whole of any subject (and it is impossible to leg- 



110 PROPER FUNCTIONS OF 

islate properly on any part without having the whole 
present to the mind), it hangs over from session to 
session through sheer impossibility of finding time to 
dispose of it. It matters not though the bill may 
have been deliberately drawn up by the authority 
deemed the best qualified, with all appliances and 
means to boot, or by a select commission, chosen for 
their conversancy with tho subject, and having em- 
ployed years in considering and digesting the partic- 
ular measure : it can not be passed, because the House 
of Commons will not forego the precious privilege of 
tinkering it with their clumsy hands. The custom 
has of late been to some extent introduced, when the 
principle of a bill has been affirmed on the second 
reading, of referring it for consideration in detail to 
a select committee; but it has not been found that 
this practice causes much less time to be lost after- 
ward in carrying it through the committee of the 
whole House : the opinions or private crotchets which 
have been overruled by knowledge always insist on 
giving themselves a second chance before the tribunal 
of ignorance. Indeed, the practice itself has been 
adopted principally by the House of Lords, the mem- 
bers of which are less busy and fond of meddling, and 
less jealous of the importance of their individual 
voices, than those of the elective House. And when 
a bill of many clauses does succeed in getting itself 
discussed in detail, what can depict the state in which 
it comes out of committee ! Clauses omitted which 
are essential to the working of the rest ; incongruous 
ones inserted to conciliate some private interest, or 



REPKESENTATIVE BODIES. Ill 

some crotchety member who threatens to delay the 
bill; 'articles foisted in on the motion of some sciolist 
with a mere smattering of the subject, leading to con- 
sequences which the member who introduced or those 
who supported the bill did not at the moment fore- 
see, and which need an amending act in the next ses- 
sion to correct their mischiefs. It is an evil inherent 
in the present mode of managing these things, that 
the explaining and defending of a bill, and of its va- 
rious provisions, is scarcely ever performed by the 
person from whose mind they emanated, who proba- 
bly has not a seat in the House. Their defense rests 
upon some minister or member of Parliament who did 
not frame them, who is dependent on cramming for 
all his arguments but those which are perfectly ob- 
vious, who does not know the full strength of his 
case, nor the best reasons by which to support it, and 
is wholly incapable of meeting unforeseen objections. 
This evil, as far as government bills are concerned, 
admits of remedy, and has been remedied in some 
representative constitutions by allowing the govern- 
ment to be represented in either House by persons in 
its confidence, having a right to speak, though not to 
vote. 

If that, as yet considerable, majority of the House 
of Commons who never desire to move an amendment 
or make a speech would no longer leave the whole 
regulation of business to those who do ; if they would 
bethink themselves that better qualifications for leg- 
islation exist, and may be found if sought for, than a 
fluent tongue, and the faculty of getting elected by a 



112 PROPER FUNCTIONS OF 

constituency, it would soon be recognized that, in leg- 
islation as well as administration, tlie only t^sk to 
wlrich a representative assembly can possibly be com- 
petent is not tliat of doing the work, but of causing it 
to be done ; of determining to whom or to what sort 
of people it shall be confided, and giving or with- 
holding the national sanction to it when performed. 
Any government fit for a high state of civilization 
would have as one of its fundamental elements a small 
body, not exceeding in number the members of a cab- 
inet, who should act as a Commission of Legislation, 
having for its appointed office to make the laws. If 
the laws of this country were, as surely they will soon 
be, revised and put into a connected form, the Com- 
mission of Codification by which this is effected should 
remain as a permanent institution, to watch over the 
work, protect it from deterioration, and make farther 
improvements as often as required. Ko one would 
wish that this body should of itself have any power 
of enacting laws ; the commission would only embody 
the element of intelligence in their construction ; Par- 
liament would represent that of will. ISTo measure 
would become a law until expressly sanctioned by 
Parliament; and Parliament, or either house, would 
have the power not only of rejecting, but of sending 
back a bill to the commission for reconsideration and 
improvement. Either house might also exercise its 
initiative by referring any subject to the commission, 
with directions to prepare a law. The commission, of 
course, would have no power of refusing its instru- 
mentality to any legislation which the country de- 



REPKESENTATIYE BODIES. 113 

sired. Instructions, concurred in by both houses, to 
draw up a bill which should effect a particular pur- 
pose, would be imperative on the commissioners, un- 
less the}^ preferred to resign their office. Once framed, 
however, Parliament should have no power to alter 
the measure, but solely to pass or reject it, or, if par- 
tially disapproved of, remit it to the commission for 
reconsideration. The commissioners should be ap- 
pointed by the crown, but should hold their ofSces for 
a time certain, say five years, unless removed on an 
address from the two houses of Parhament, grounded 
either on personal misconduct (as in the case of judges), 
or on refusal to draw up a bill in obedience to the de- 
mands of" Parliament. At the expiration of the five 
years a member should cease to hold ofiice unless re- 
appointed, in order to provide a convenient mode of 
getting rid of those who had not been found equal to 
their duties, and of infusing new and younger blood 
into the bod}^ 

The necessity of some provision corresponding to 
this was felt even in the Athenian Democracj^, where, 
in the time of its most complete ascendency, the pop- 
ular Ecclesia could pass psephisms (mostly decrees on 
single matters of policy), but laws, so called, could 
only be made or altered by a different and less numer- 
ous body, renewed annually, called the Komothetas, 
whose duty it also was to revise the whole of the laws, 
and keep them consistent with one another. In the 
English Constitution there is great difficulty in intro- 
ducing any arrangement which is new both in form 
and in substance, but comparatively little repugnance 



114 PEOPER FUNCTIONS OF 

is felt to the attainment of new purposes by an adapt- 
ation of existing forms and traditions. It appears to 
me that the means might be devised of enriching the 
Constitution with this great improvement through 
the machinery of the House of Lords. A commis- 
sion for preparing bills would in itself be no more an 
innovation on the Constitution than the Board for 
the administration of the Poor Laws, or the Inclosure 
Commission. If, in consideration of the great impor- 
tance and dignity of the trust, it were made a rule 
that every person appointed a member of the Legis- 
lative Commission, unless removed from of&ce on an 
address from Parliament, should be a peer for life, it 
is probable that the same good sense and. taste which 
leave the judicial functions of the peerage practically 
to the exclusive care of the law lords would leave 
the business of legislation, except on questions in- 
volving political principles and interests, to the pro- 
fessional legislators ; that bills originating in the Up- 
per House would always be drawn up by them ; that 
the government would devolve on them the framing 
of all its bills ; and that private members of the 
House of Commons would gradually find it conven- 
ient, and likely to facilitate the passing of their 
measures through the two houses, if, instead of bring- 
ing in a bill and submitting it directly to the House, 
they obtained leave to introduce it and have it refer- 
red to the Legislative Commission ; for it would, of 
course, be open to the House to refer for the consid- 
eration of that body not a subject merely, but any 
specific proposal, or a draft of a bill in extenso^ when 



KEPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 115 

any member ttiongbt himself capable of preparing one 
such as ought to pass ; and the House would doubt- 
less refer every such draft to the' commission, if only 
as materials, and for the benefit of the suggestions it 
might contain, as they would, in like manner, refer 
every amendment or objection which might be pro- 
posed in writing by any member of the House after 
a measure had left the commissioners' hands. The 
alteration of bills by a committee of the whole House 
would cease, not by formal abolition, but by desue- 
tude ; the right not being abandoned, but laid up in 
the same armory with the royal veto, the right of 
withholding the supplies, and other ancient instru- 
ments of political warfare, which no one desires to see 
used, but no one likes to part with, lest they should at 
any time be found to be still needed in an extraordi- 
nary emergency. By such arrangements as these, 
legislation would assume its proper place as a work 
of skilled labor and special study and experience ; 
while the most important liberty of the nation, that 
of being governed only by laws assented to by 'its 
elected representatives, would be fully preserved, and 
made more valuable by being detached from the seri- 
ous, but by no means unavoidable drawbacks which 
now accompany it in the form of ignorant and ill- 
considered legislation. 

Instead of the function of governing, for which it 
is radically unfit, the proper office of a representative 
assembly is to watch and control the government ; to 
throw the light of publicity on its acts ; to compel a 
full exposition and justification of all of them which 



116 PEOPER FUNCTIONS OF 

any one considers questionable; to censure them if 
found condemnable, and, if the men who compose the 
government abuse their trust, or fulfill it in a manner 
which conflicts with the deliberate sense of the nation, 
to expel them from of&ce, and either expressly or vir- 
tually appoint their successors. This is surely ample 
power, and security enough for the libert}^ of the na- 
tion. In addition to this, the Parliament has an of- 
fice not inferior even to this in importance; to be 
at once the nation's Committee of Grrievances and its 
Congress of Opinions; an arena in which not only 
the general opinion of the nation, but that of every 
section of it, and, as far as possible, of every eminent 
individual whom it contains, can produce itself in full 
light and challenge discussion ; where every person in 
the country may count upon finding somebody who 
speaks his mind as well or better than he could speak 
it himself — not to friends and partisans exclusively, 
but in the face of opponents, to be tested by adverse 
controversy ; where those whose opinion is over- 
ruled feel satisfied that it is heard, and set aside not 
by a mere act of will, but for what are thought supe- 
rior reasons, and commend themselves as such to the 
representatives of the majority of the nation ; where 
every party or opinion in the country can muster its 
strength, and be cured of any illusion concerning the 
number or power of its adherents; where the opinion 
which prevails in the nation makes itself manifest as 
prevailing, and marshals its hosts in the presence of 
the government, which is thus enabled and compelled 
to give way to it on the mere manifestation, without 



REPliESP:NTATIVE BODIES. 117 

the actual employment of its strength ; where states- 
men can assure themselves, far more certainly than 
by any other signs, what elements of opinion and 
power are growing and what declining, and are ena- 
bled to shape their measures with some regard not 
solely to present exigencies, but to tendencies in prog- 
ress. Eepresentative assemblies are often taunted by 
their enemies with being places of mere talk and 
havardage. There has seldom been more misplaced 
derision. I know not how a representative assembly 
can more usefully employ itself than in talk, when 
the subject of talk is the great public interests of the 
country, and every sentence of it represents the opin- 
ion either of some important body of persons in the 
nation, or of an individual in whom some such body 
have reposed their confidence. A place where every 
interest and shade of opinion in the country can have 
its ^ause even passionately pleaded, in the face of the 
government and of all other interests and opinion^, 
can compel them to listen, and either comply, or state 
clearly why they do not, is in itself, if it answered no 
other purpose, one of the most important political in- 
stitutions that can exist any where, and one of the 
foremost benefits of free government. Such "talk- 
ing" would never be looked upon with disparagement 
if it were not allowed to stop "doing;" which it 
never would, if assemblies knew and acknowledged 
that talking and discussion are their proper business, 
while doing^ as the result of discussion, is the task not 
of a miscellaneous body, but of individuals specially 
trained to it ; that the fit ofiice of an assembly is to 



118 PROPER FUNCTIONS OF 

see that those individuals are honestly and intelli- 
gently chosen, and to interfere no farther with them, 
except by unlimited latitude of suggestion and crit- 
icism, and by applying or withholding the final seal 
of national assent. It is for want of this judicious re- 
serve that popular assemblies attempt to do what they 
can not do well — to govern and legislate — and pro- 
vide no machinery but their own for much of it, wKen 
of course every hour spent in talk is an hour with- 
drawn from actual business. But the very fact which 
most unfits such bodies for a council of legislation, 
qualifies them the more for their other office — name- 
ly, that they are not a selection of the greatest polit- 
ical minds in the country, from whose opinions little 
could with certainty be inferred concerning those of 
the nation, but are, when properly constituted, a fair 
sample of every grade of intellect among the people 
which is at all entitled to a voice in public affairs. 
Their part is to indicate wants, to be an organ for 
popular demands, and a place of adverse discussion 
for all opinions relating to public matters, both great 
and small ; and, along with this, to check by criticism, 
and eventually by withdrawing their support, those 
high public officers who really conduct the public 
business, or who appoint those by whom it is con- 
ducted. Nothing but the restriction of the function 
of representative bodies within these rational limits 
will enable the benefits of popular control to be en- 
joyed in conjunction with the no less important requi- 
sites (growing ever more important as human affairs 
increase in scale and in complexity) of skilled legisla- 



EEPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 119 

tion and administration. There are no means of com- 
bining these benefits except by separating the func- 
tions which guarantee the one from those which es- 
sentially require the other; by disjoining the ofiice 
of control and criticism from the actual conduct of af- 
fairs, and devolving the former on the representatives 
of the Many, while securing for the latter, under strict 
responsibility to the nation, the acquired knowledge 
and practiced intelligence of a specially trained and 
experienced Few. 

The preceding discussion of the functions which 
ought to devolve on the sovereign representative as- 
sembly of the nation would require to be followed by 
an inquiry into those properly vested in the minor 
representative bodies, which ought to exist for pur- 
poses that regard only localities. And such an in- 
quiry forms an essential part of the present treatise ; 
but many reasons require its postponement, until we 
have considered the most proper composition of the 
great representative body, destined to control as sov- 
ereign the enactment of laws and the administration 
of the general affairs of the nation. 



120 INFIRMITIES AND DANGERS 



CHAPTER YL 

OF THE INFIRMITIES AND DANGERS TO WHICH REP- 
RESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IS LIABLE. 

The defects of any form of government may be ei- 
ther negative or positive. It is negatively defective 
if it does not concentrate in the hands of the authori- 
t ies power sufficient to fulfill the necessary offices of a 
[government, or if it does not sufficiently develop by 
exercise the actual capacities and social feelings of the 
individual citizens. On neither of these points is it 
necessary that much should be said at this stage of 
our inquiry. 

The want of an amount of power in the govern- 
ment adequate to preserve order and allow of prog- 
ress in the people is incident rather to a wild and 
rude state of society generally than to any particular 
form of political union. When the people are too 
much attached to savage independence to be tolerant 
of the amount of power to which it is for their good 
that they should be subject, the state of society (as al- 
ready observed) is not yet ripe for representative gov- 
ernmei^t. When the time for that government has ar- 
rived, sufficient power for all needful purposes is sure 
to reside in the sovereign assembly ; and if enough of 
it is not intrusted to the executive, this can only arise 
from a jealous feeling on the part of the assembly to- 



OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 121 

ward the administration, never likely to exist but. 
where the constitutional power of the assembly to turn 
them out of office has not yet sufficiently established 
itself. Wherever that constitutional right is admitted 
in principle and fully operative in practice, there is no 
fear that the assembly will not be willing to trust its 
own ministers with any amount of power really desir- 
able ; the danger is, on the contrary, lest they should 
grant it too ungrudgingly, and too indefinite in ex- 
tent, since the power of the minister is the power of 
the body who make and who keep him so. It is, how- 
ever, very likely, and is one of the dangers of a con- 
trolling assembly, that it may be lavish of powers, but 
afterward interfere with their exercise ; may give pow- 
er by wholesale, and take it back in detail, by multi- 
plied single acts of interference in the business of ad- 
ministration. The evils arising from this assumption 
of the actual function of governing, in lieu of that of 
criticising and checking those who govern, have been 
sufficiently dwelt upon in the preceding chapter. No 
safeguard can in the nature of things be provided 
against this improper meddling, except a strong and 
general conviction of its injurious character. 

The other negative defect which may reside in a 
government, that of not bringing into sufficient exer- 
cise the individual faculties, moral, intellectual, and act- 
ive, of the people, has been exhibited generally in set- 
ting forth the distinctive mischiefs of despotism. As 
between one form of popular government and anoth- 
er, the advantage in this respect lies with that which 
most widely diffuses the exercise of public functions ; 

F 



122 INFIRMITIES AND DANGERS 

on the one hand, by excluding fewest from the suf- 
frage ; on the other, bj opening to all classes of pri- 
vate citizens, so far as is consistent with other equally 
important objects, the widest participation in the de- 
tails of judicial and administrative business ; as by 
jury-trial, admission to municipal ofi&ces, and, above 
all, by the utmost possible publicity and liberty of dis- 
cussion, whereby not merely a few individuals in suc- 
cession, but the whole public, are made, to a certain 
extent, participants in the government, and sharers in 
the instruction and mental exercise derived from it. 
The farther illustration of these benefits, as well as of 
the limitations' under which they must be pursued, 
will be better deferred until we come to speak of the 
details of administration. 

l^\-iQ positive evils and dangers of the representative, 
as of every other form of government, may be reduced 
to two heads : .first, general ignorance and incapacity, 
or, to speak more moderately, insuf&cient mental qual- 
ifications in the controlling body ; secondly, the dan- 
ger of its being under the influence of interests not 
identical with the general welfare of the community. 

The former of these evils, deficiency in high mental 
|ualifications, is one to which it is generally supposed 
that popular government is liable in a greater degree 
than any other. The energy of a monarch, the stead- 
iness and prudence of an aristocracy, are thought to 
contrast most favorably with the vacillation and short- 
sightedness of even the most qualified democracy. 
These propositions, however, are not by any means so 
well founded as they at first sight appear. 



OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 128 

Compared with simple monarchy, representative 
government is in these respects at no disadvantage. 
Except in a rude age, hereditary monarchy, when it 
is really such, and not aristocracy in disguise, much 
surpasses democracy in all the forms of incapacity 
supposed to be characteristic of the last. I say except 
in a rude age, because in a really rude state of society 
there is a considerable guaranty for the intellectual 
and active capacities of the sovereign. His personal 
will is constantly encountering obstacles from the 
willfulness of his subjects, and of powerful individu- 
als among their number. The circumstances of soci- 
ety do not afford him much temptation to mere luxu- 
rious self-indulgence ; mental and bodily activity, es- 
pecially political and military, are his principal ex- 
citements; and among turbulent chiefs and lawless 
followers he has little authority, and is seldom long 
secure of his throne, unless he possesses a considera- 
ble amount of personal daring, dexterity, and energy. 
The reason why the average of talent is so high 
among the Henries and Edwards of our history may 
be read in the tragical fate of the second Edward and 
the second Eichard, and the civil wars and disturb- 
ances of the reigns of John and his incapable suc- 
cessor. The troubled period of the Eeformation also 
produced several eminent hereditary monarchs — Eliz- 
abeth, Henri Quatre, Gustavus Adolphus ; but they 
were mostly bred up in adversity, succeeded to the 
throne by the unexpected failure of nearer heirs, or 
had to contend with great difficulties in the commence- 
ment of their reign. Since European life assumed a 



124 INFIRMITIES AND DANGER& 

settled aspect, any thiDg above mediocrity in a hered- 
itary king has become extremely rare, while the gen- 
eral average has been even below mediocrity, both in 
talent and in vigor of character. A monarchy con- 
stitutionally absolute now only maintains itself in ex- 
istence (except temporarily in the minds of some ac- 
tive-minded usurper) through the mental qualifica- 
tions of a permanent bureaucracy. The Kussian and 
Austrian governments, and even the French govern- 
ment in its normal condition, are oligarchies of offi- 
cials, of whom the head of the state does little more 
than select the chiefs. I am speaking of the regular 
course of their administration ; for the will of the 
master of course determines many of their particular 
acts.. 

The governments which have been remarkable in 
history for sustained mental ability and vigor in the 
conduct of affairs have generally been aristocracies. 
But they have been, without any exception, aristoc- 
racies of public functionaries.' The ruling bodies 
have been so narrow, that each member, or at least 
each influential member, of the body was able to 
make, and did make, public business an active pro- 
fession, and the principal occupation- of his life. The 
only aristocracies which have manifested high gov- 
erning capacities, and acted on steady maxims of pol- 
icy through many generations, are those of Kome 
and Venice. But at Venice, though the privileged 
order was numerous, the actual management of affairs 
was rigidly concentrated in a small oligarchy within 
the oligarchy, whose whole lives were devoted to the 



OF REPKESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 125 

study and conduct of the affairs of state. The Eoman 
government partook more of the character of an open 
aristocracy like our own. But the really governing 
body, the Senate, was exclusively composed of per- 
sons who had exercised public functions, and had 
either already filled, or were looking forward to fill 
the highest offices of the state, at the peril of a severe 
responsibility in case of incapacity and failure. When 
once members of the Senate, their lives were pledged 
to the conduct of public affairs; they were not per- 
mitted even to leave Italy except in the discharge of 
some public trust ; and unless turned out of the Sen- 
ate by the censors for character or conduct deemed 
disgraceful, they retained their powers and responsi- 
bilities to the end of life. In an aristocracy thus con- 
stituted, every member felt his personal importance 
entirely bound up with the dignity and estimation of 
the commonwealth which he administered, and with 
the part he was able to play in its councils. This 
dignity and estimation were quite different things 
from the prosperity and happiness of the general body 
of the citizens, and were often wholly incompatible 
with it. But they were closely linked with the ex- 
ternal success and aggrandizement of the state; and it 
was, consequently, in the pursuit of that object almost 
exclusively, that either the Roman or the Yenetian 
aristocracies manifested the systematically wise collect- 
ive policy and the great individual capacities for gov- 
ernment for which history has deservedly given them 
credit. 

It thus appears that the only governments, not rep- 



126 INFIRMITIES AND. DANGERS 

resentative, in which high political skill and ability 
have been other than exceptional, whether under mo- 
narchical or aristocratic forms, have been essentially 
bureaucracies. The work of government has been in 
the hands of governors by profession, which is the 
essence and meaning of bureaucracy. Whether the 
work is done by them because they have been trained 
to it, or they are trained to it because it is to be done 
by them, makes a great difference in many respects, 
but none at all as to the essential character of the rule. 
Aristocracies, on the other hand, like that of England, 
in which the class who possessed the power derived 
it merely from their social position, without being 
specially trained or devoting themselves exclusively 
to it (and in which, therefore, the power was not exer- 
cised directly, but through representative institutions 
oligarchically constituted), have been, in respect to 
intellectual endowments, much on a par with democ- 
racies ; that is, they have manifested sucb qualities in 
any considerable degree only during the temporary 
ascendency which great and popular talents, united 
with a distinguished position, have given to some one 
man. Themistocles and Pericles, "Washington and 
Jefferson, were not more completely exceptions in 
their several democracies, and were assuredly much 
more briUiant exceptions, than the Chathams and 
Peels of the representative aristocracy of Great Brit- 
ain, or even the Sullys and Colberts of the aristocratic 
monarchy of France. A great minister in the aristo- 
cratic governments of modern Europe is almost as 
rare a phenomenon as a great king. 



OF KEPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 127 

The comparison, therefore, as to the intellectual at- 
tributes of a government has to be made between a 
representative democracy and a bureaucracy ; all oth- 
er governments may be left out of the account. And 
here it must be acknowledged that a bureaucratic gov- 
ernment has, in some important respects, greatly the 
advantage. It accumulates experience, acquires well- 
tried and well-considered traditional maxims, and 
makes provision for appropriate practical knowledge 
in those who have the actual conduct of affairs. But 
it is not equally favorable to individual energy of 
mind. The disease which afflicts bureaucratic gov- 
ernments, and which they usually die of, is routine. 
They perish by the immutability of their maxims, 
and, still more, by the universal law that whatever be- ^ 
comes a routine loses its vital principle, and, having 
no longer a mind acting within it, goes on revolving 
mechanically, though the work it is intended to do re- 
mains undone. A bureaucracy always tends to be- 
come a pedantocracy. When the bureaucracy is the 
real government, the spirit of the corps (as with the 
Jesuits) bears down the individuality of its more dis- 
tinguished members. In the profession of govern- 
ment, as in other professions, the sole idea of the ma- 
jority is to do what they have been taught; and it 
requires a popular government to enable the concep- 
tions of the man of original genius among them to 
prevail over the obstructive spirit of trained medioe- 
rity. Only in a popular government (setting apart 
the accident of a highly intelligent despot) could Sir 
Eowland Hill have been victorious over the Post-office. 



128 INFIEMITIES AND DANGERS 

A popular government installed him in the Post-of- 
fice, and made the body, in spite of itself, obey the im- 
pulse given by the man who united special knowl- 
edge with individual vigor and originality. That 
the Eoman aristocracy escaped this characteristic dis- 
ease of a bureaucracy was evidently owing to its pop- 
ular element. All special offices, both those which 
gave a seat in the Senate and those which were sought 
by senators, were conferred by popular election. The 
Eussian government is a characteristic exemplification 
of both the good and bad side of bureaucracy: its 
fixed maxims, directed with Eoman perseverance to 
the same unflinchingly-pursued ends from age to age ; 
the remarkable skill with which those ends are gen- 
erally pursued ; the frightful internal corruption, and 
the permanent organized hostility to improvements 
from, without, which even the autocratic power of a 
vigorous-minded emperor is seldom or never sufficient 
to overcome ; the patient obstructiveness of the body 
being in the long run more than a match for the fitful 
energy of one man. The Chinese government, a bu- 
reaucracy of Mandarins, is, as far as known to us, an- 
other apparent example of the same qualities and de- 
fects. 

In all human affairs, conflicting influences are re- 
quired to keep one another alive and efficient even for 
their own proper uses ; and the exclusive pursuit of 
one good object, apart from some other which should 
accompany it, ends not in excess of one and defect of 
the other, but in the decay and loss even of that which 
has been exclusively cared for. Government by train- 

F2 



OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 129 

ed officials can not do for a country the things which 
can be done by a free government, but it might be 
supposed capable of doing some things which free gov- 
ernment of itself can not do. We find, however, that 
an outside element of freedom is necessar}^ to enable 
it to do effectually or permanently even its own busi- 
ness. And so, also, freedom can not produce its best 
effects, and often breaks down altogether, unless means 
can be found of combining it with trained and skilled 
administration. There could not be a moment's hes- 
itation between representative government, among a 
people in any degree ripe for it, and the most perfect 
imaginable bureaucrac}^ But it is, at the same time, 
one of the most important ends of political institutions 
to attain as many of the qualities of the one as are con- 
sistent with the other ; to secure, as far as they can be 
made compatible, the great advantage of the conduct 
of affairs by skilled persons, bred to it as an intellect- 
ual profession, along with that of a general control 
vested in, and seriously exercised by, bodies represent- 
ative of the entire people. Much would be done to- 
ward this end by recognizing the line of separation, 
discussed in the preceding chapter, between the work 
of government properly so called, which can only be 
well performed after special cultivation, and that of 
selecting, watching, and, when needful, controlling the 
governors, which in this case, as in all others, properly 
devolves, not on those who do the work, but on those 
for whose benefit it ought to be done. ISTo progress 
at all can be made toward obtaining a skilled democ- 
racy, unless the democracy are willing that the work 

r2 



130 INFIRMITIES AND DANGEKS 

which requires skill should be done by those who pos- 
sess it. A democracj has enough to do in providing 
itself with an amount of mental competency sufficient 
for its own proper work, that of superintendence and 
check. 

How to obtain and secure this amount is one of the 
questions to be taken into consideration in judging 
of the proper constitution of a representative body. 
In proportion as its composition fails to secure this 
amount, the assembly will encroach, by special acts, 
on the province of the executive ; it will expel a good, 
or elevate and uphold a bad ministry ; it will connive 
at, or overlook in them, abuses of trust, will be de- 
luded by their false pretenses, or will withhold sup- 
port from those who endeavor to fulfill their trust 
conscientiously ; it will countenance or impose a self- 
ish, a capricious and impulsive, a short-sighted, igno- 
rant, and prejudiced general policy, foreign and domes- 
tic ; it will abrogate good laws or enact bad ones ; let 
in new evils, or cling with perverse obstinacy to old ; 
it will even, perhaps, under misleading impulses, mo- 
mentary or permanent, emanating from itself or from 
its constituents, tolerate or connive at proceedings 
which set law aside altogether in cases where equal 
justice would not be agreeable to popular feeling. 
Such are among the dangers of representative gov- 
ernment, arising from a constitution of the represent- 
ation which does not secure an adequate amount of 
intelligence and knowledge in the representative as- 
sembly, 



OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. ISI 

We next proceed to the evils arising from tlae prev- 
alence of modes of action in the representative body, 
dictated by sinister interests (to employ the useful 
phrase introduced by Bentham), that is, interests con- 
ilicting more or less with the general good of the 
community. 

It is universally admitted that, of the evils incident 
to monarchical and aristocratic governments, a large 
proportion arise from this cause. The interest of the 
monarch, or the interest of the aristocrac}?-, either col- 
lective or that of its individual members, is promoted, 
or they themselves think that it will be promoted, by 
conduct opposed to that which the general interest of 
the community requires. The interest, for example, 
of the government is to tax heavily ; that of the com- 
munity is to be as little taxed as the necessary ex- 
penses of good government permit. The interest of 
the king and of the governing aristocracy is to pos- 
sess and exercise unlimited power over the people ; to 
enforce, on their part, complete conformity to the will 
and preferences of the rulers. The interest of the 
people is to have as little control exercised over them 
in any respect as is consistent with attaining the legit- 
imate ends of government. The interest, or apparent 
and supposed interest of the king or aristocracy, is to 
permit no censure of themselves, at least in any form 
which they may consider either to threaten their pow- 
er or seriously to interfere with their free agency. The 
interest of the people is that there should be full lib- 
erty of censure on every public officer, and on every 
public act or measure. The interest of a ruling class, 



132 INFIRMITIES AND DANGERS 

whether in an aristocracy or an aristocratic monarchy, 
is to assume to themselves an endless variety of un- 
just privileges, sometimes benefiting their pockets at 
the expense of the people, sometimes merely tending 
to exalt them above others, or, what is the same thing 
in different words, to degrade others below themselves. 
If the people are disaffected, which under such a gov- 
ernment they are very likely to be, it is the interest 
of the king or aristocracy to keep them at a low lev- 
el of intelligence and education, foment dissensions 
among them, and even prevent them from being too 
well off, lest they should " wax fat and kick," agreea- 
bly to the maxim of Cardinal Eichelieu in his cele- 
brated " Testament Politique." All these things are 
for the interest of a king or aristocracy, in a purely 
selfish point of view, unless a sufficiently strong coun- 
ter-interest is created by the fear of provoking resist- 
ance. All these evils have been, and many of them 
still are, produced by the sinister interests of kings 
and aristocracies, where their power is sufficient to 
raise them above the opinion of the rest of the com- 
munity ; nor is it rational to expect, as the conse- 
quence of such a position, any other conduet. 

These things are superabundantly evident in the 
case of a monarchy or an aristocracy, but it is some- 
times rather gratuitously assumed that the same kind 
of injurious influences do not operate in a democracy. 
Looking at democracy in the way in which it is com- 
monly conceived as the rule of the numerical ma- 
jority, it is surely possible that the ruling power may 
be under the dominion of sectional or class interests. 



OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 138 

pointing to conduct different from that whicli would 
be dictated by impartial regard for the interest of all. 
Suppose the majority to be whites, the minority ne- 
groes, or vice versa: is it likely that the majority 
would allow equal justice to the minority? Suppose 
the majority Catholics, the minority Protestants, or 
the reverse : will there not be the same danger ? Or 
let the majority be English, the minority Irish, or the 
contrary : is there not a great probability of similar 
evil ? In all countries there is a majority of poor, 
a minority who, in contradistinction, may be called 
rich. Between these two classes, on many questions, 
there is complete opposition of apparent interest. 
We will suppose the majority sufficiently intelligent 
to be aware that it is not for their advantage to 
weaken the security of property, and that it would 
be weakened by any act of arbitrary spoliation. But 
is there not a considerable danger lest they should 
throw upon the possessors of what is called realized 
propert}^, and upon the larger incomes, an unfair 
share, or even the whole, of the burden of taxation, 
and having done so, add to the amount without scru- 
ple, expending the proceeds in modes supposed to 
conduce to the profit and advantage of the laboring 
class ? Suppose, again, a minority of skilled labor- 
ers, a majority of unskilled : the experience of many 
Trade Unions, unless they are greatly calumniated, 
justifies the apprehension that equality of earnings 
might be imposed as an obligation, and that piece- 
work, and all practices which enable superior indus- 
try or abilities to gain a superior reward, might be 



184 INFIRMITIES AND DANGERS 

put down. Legislative attempts to raise wages, lim- 
itation of competition in tlie labor market, taxes or 
restrictions on machinery, and on improvements of 
all kinds tending to dispense with any of the exist- 
ing labor — even, perhaps, protection of the home pro- 
ducer against foreign industry — are very natural (I 
do not venture to say whether probable) results of a 
feeling of class interest in a governing majority of 
manual laborers. 

It will be said that none of these things are for the 
rear interest of the most numerous class: to which I 
answer, that if the conduct of human beings was de- 
termined by no other interested considerations than 
those which constitute their "real" interest, neither 
monarchy nor oligarchy would be such bad govern- 
ments as they are ; for assuredly very strong argu- 
ments may be, and often have been, adduced to show 
that either a king or a governing senate are in much 
the most enviable position when ruling justly and 
vigilantly over an active, wealthy, enlightened, and 
high-minded people. But a king only now and then, 
and an oligarchy in no known instance, have taken 
this exalted view of their self-interest ; and why 
should we expect a loftier mode of thinking from the 
laboring classes? It is not what their interest is, 
but what they suppose it to be, that is the important 
consideration with respect to their conduct ; and it is 
quite conclusive against any theory of government 
that it assumes the numerical majority to do habitu- 
ally what is never done, nor expected to be done, save 
in very exceptional cases, by any other depositaries 



OF KEPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 135 

of power — namely, to direct their conduct by their 
real ultimate interest, in opposition to their immediate 
and apparent interest. No one, surely, can doubt that 
the pernicious measures above enumerated, and many 
others as bad, would be for the immediate interest of 
the general body of unskilled laborers. It is quite 
possible that they would be for the selfish interest of 
the whole existing generation of the class. The re- 
laxation of industry and activity, and diminished en- 
couragement to saving, which would be their ultimate 
consequence, might perhaps be little felt by the class 
of unskilled laborers in the space of a single lifetime. 
Some of the most fatal changes in human affairs have 
been, as to their more manifest immediate effects, ben- 
eficial. The establishment of the despotism of the 
Caesars was a great benefit to the entire generation in 
which it took place. It put a stop to civil war, 
abated a vast amount of malversation and tyranny 
by praetors and proconsuls ; it fostered manj^ of the 
graces of life, and intellectual cultivation in all de- 
partments not political; it produced monuments of 
literary genius dazzling to the imaginations of shallow 
readers of history, who do not reflect that the men to 
whom the despotism of Augustus (as well as of Lo- 
renzo de' Medici and of Louis XIY.) owes its bril- 
liancy were all formed in the generation preceding. 
The accumulated riches, and the mental energy and 
activity produced by centuries of freedom, remained 
for the benefit of the first generation of slaves. Yet 
this was the commencement of a regime by whose 
gradual operation all the civilization which had been 



186 INFIKMITIES AND DANGEES 

gained insensibly faded away, until the empire which 
had conquered and embraced the world in its grasp 
so completely lost even its military efficiency that in- 
vaders whom three or four legions had always sufficed 
to coerce were able to overrun and occupy nearly the 
whole of its vast territory. The fresh impulse given 
by Christianity came but j ust in time to save arts and 
letters from perishing, and the human race from sink- 
ing back into perhaps endless night. 

When we talk of the interest of a body of men, or 
even of an individual man, as a principle determining 
their actions, the question what would be considered 
their interest by an unprejudiced observer is one of 
the least important parts of the whole matter. As 
Coleridge observes, the man makes the motive, not 
the motive the man. Yf hat it is the man's interest 
to do or refrain from depends less on any outward 
circumstances than upon what sort of man he is. If 
you wish to know what is practically a man's interest, 
you must know the cast of his habitual feelings and 
thoughts. Every body has two kinds of interests — 
interests which he cares for and interests which he 
does not care for. Every body has selfish and unself- 
ish interests, and a selfish man has cultivated the habit 
of caring for the former and not caring for the latter. 
Ever}^ one has present and distant interests, and the 
improvident man is he who cares for the present in- 
terests and does not care for the distant. It matters 
little that on any correct calculation the latter may be 
the more considerable, if the habits of his mind lead 
him to fix his thoughts and wishes solely on the for- 



OF KEPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 137 

mer. It would be vain to attempt to persuade a man 
who beats bis wife and ill-treats bis cbildren tbat be 
would be bappier if be lived in love and kindness 
witb tbem. He would be bappier if be were tbe kind 
of person wbo could so live ; but be is not, and it is 
probably too late for bim to become tbat kind of per- 
son. Being as be is, tbe gratification of bis love of 
domineering and tbe indulgence of bis ferocious tem- 
per are to bis perceptions a greater good to bimself 
tban be would be capable of deriving from tbe pleas- 
ure and affection of tbose dependent on bim. He bas 
no pleasure in tbeir pleasure, and does not care for 
tbeir affection. His neigbbor, wbo does, is probably 
a bappier man tban be ; but could be be persuaded 
of tbis, tbe persuasion would, most likely, only still 
fartber exasperate bis malignity or bis irritability. 
On tbe average, a person wbo cares for otber people, 
for bis country, or for mankind, is a bappier man tban 
one wbo does not; but of wbat use is it to preacb 
tbis doctrine to a man wbo cares for notbing but bis 
own ease or bis own pocket? He can not care for 
otber people if be would. It is like preacbing to tbe 
worm wbo crawls on tbe ground bow mucb better it 
would be for bim if be were an eagle. 

Now it is a universally observed fact tbat tbe two 
evil dispositions in question, tbe disposition to prefer 
a man's selfisb interests to tbose wbicb be sbares witb 
otber people, and bis immediate and direct interests 
to tbose wbicb are indirect and remote, are cbaracter- 
istics most especially called fortb and fostered by tbe 
possession of power. Tbe moment a man, or a class 



188 INFIRMITIES AND DANGEKS 

of men, find themselves with power in their hands, 
the man's individual interest, or the class's separate 
interest, acquires an entirely new degree of import- 
ance in their eyes. Finding themselves worshiped 
by others, they become worshipers of themselves, and 
think themselves entitled to be counted at a hundred 
times the value of other people, while the facility they 
acquire of doing as they like without regard to conse- 
quences insensibly weakens the habits which make 
men look forward even to such consequences as affect 
themselves. This is the meaning of the universal tra- 
dition, grounded on universal experience, of men's be- 
ing corrupted by power. Every one knows how ab- 
surd it would be to infer from what a man is or does 
when in a private station, that he will be and do ex- 
actly the like when a despot on a throne ; where the 
bad parts of his human nature, instead of being re- 
strained and kept in subordination by every circum- 
stance of his life and by every person surrounding 
him, are courted by all persons, and ministered to by 
all circumstances. It would be quite as absurd to 
entertain a similar expectation in regard to a class of 
men ; the Demos, or any other. Let them be ever 
so modest and amenable to reason while there is a 
power over them stronger than they, we ought to ex- 
pect a total change in this respect when they them- 
selves become the strongest power. 

Governments must be made for human beings as 
they are, or as they are capable of speedily becoming; 
and in any state of cultivation which mankind, or 
any class among them, have yet attained, ojp are likely 



OF REPKESENTATIVE GOVERNMJ^NT. 139 

soon to attain, the interests by which they will be 
led, when they are thinking only of self-interest, will 
be almost exclusively those which are obvious at first 
sight, and which operate on their present condition. 
It is only a disinterested regard for others, and es- 
pecially for what comes after the!n, for the idea of 
posterity, of their country, or of mankind, whether 
grounded on sympathy or on a conscientions feeling, 
which ever directs the minds and purposes of classes 
or bodies of men toward distant or nnobvious inter- 
ests ; and it can not be maintained that any form of 
government would be rational which required as a 
condition that these exalted principles of action should 
be the guiding and master motives in the conduct of 
average human beings. A certain amount of con- 
science and of disinterested public spirit may fairly 
be calculated on in the citizens of an}^ community 
ripe for representative government, but it would be 
ridiculous to expect such a degree of it, combined 
with such intellectual discernment, as would be proof 
against any plausible fallacy tending to make that 
which was for their class interest appear the dictate 
of justice and of the general good. We all know 
what specious fallacies may be urged in defense of 
every act of injustice yet proposed for the imaginary 
benefit of the mass. We know how many, not other- 
wise fools or bad men, have thought it justifiable to 
repudiate the national debt. We know how manj^, 
not destitute of ability and of considerable popular 
influence, think it fair to throw the whole burden of 
taxation upon savings, under the name of realized 



140 INFIRMITIES AND DANGERS 

property, allowing those whose progenitors and them- 
selves have always spent all they received, to remain, 
as a reward for such exemplary conduct, wholly un- 
taxed. We know what powerful arguments, the more 
dangerous because there is a portion of truth in them, 
may be brought against all inheritance, against the 
power of bequest, against every advantage which one 
person seems to have over another. We know how 
easily the uselessness of almost every branch of knowl- 
edge may be proved to the complete satisfaction of 
those who do not possess it. How many, not alto- 
gether stupid men, think the scientific study of lan- 
guages useless, think ancient literature useless, all eru- 
dition useless, logic and metaphysics useless, poetry 
and the fine arts idle and frivolous, political economy 
purely mischievous? Even history has been pro- 
nounced useless and mischievous by able men. Noth- 
ing but that acquaintance with external nature, em- 
pirically acquired, which serves directly for the pro- 
duction of objects necessary to existence or agreeable 
to the senses, would get its utility recognized if peo- 
ple had the least encouragement to disbelieve it. Is 
it reasonable to think that even much more cultivated 
minds than those of the numerical majority can be ex- 
pected to be, will have so delicate a conscience, and 
so just an appreciation of what is against their own 
apparent interest, that they will reject these and the 
innumerable other fallacies which will press in upon 
them from all quarters as soon as they come into 
power, to induce them to follow their own selfish in- 
clinations and short-sighted notions of their own good. 



OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 141 

ill opposition to justice, at the expense of all other 
classes and of posterity ? 

One of the greatest dangers, therefore, of democra- 
cy, as of all other forms of government, lies in the sin- 
ister interest of the holders of power : it is the danger 
of class legislation, of government intended for (wheth- 
er really effecting it or not) the immediate benefit of 
the dominant class, to the lasting detriment of the 
whole. And one of the most important questions 
demanding consideration in determining the best con- 
stitution of a representative government is how to 
provide efficacious securities against this evil. 

If we consider as a class, politically speaking, any 
number of persons who have the same sinister inter- 
est — that is, whose direct and apparent interest points 
toward the same description of bad measures — the 
desirable object would be that no class, and no com- 
bination of classes likely to combine, shall be able to 
exercise a preponderant influence in the government. 
A modern community, not divided within itself by 
strong antipathies of race, language, or nationality, 
may be considered as in the main divisible into two 
sections, which, in spite of partial variations, corre- 
spond on the whole with two divergent directions of 
apparent interest. Let us call them (in brief general 
terms) laborers on the one hand, employers of labor 
on the other ; including, however, along with employ- 
ers of labor not only retired capitalists and the pos- 
sessors of inherited wealth, but all that highly-paid 
description of laborers (such as the professions) whose 
education and way of life assimilate them with the 



142 INFIRMITIES AND DANGERS 

rich, and whose prospect and ambition it is to raise 
themselves into that class. With the laborers, on the 
other hand, may be ranked those smaller employers 
of labor who by interests, habits, and educational im- 
pressions are assimilated in wishes, tastes, and objects 
to the laboring classes, comprehending a large propor- 
tion of petty tradesmen. In a state of society thus 
composed, if the representative system could be made 
ideally perfect, and if it were possible to maintain it 
in that state, its organization must be such that these 
two classes, manual laborers and their affinities on 
one side, employers of labor and their affinities on the 
other, should be, in the arrangement of the represent- 
ative system, equally balanced, each influencing about 
an equal number of votes in Parliament ; since, as- 
suming that the majority of each class, in any differ- 
ence between them, would be mainly governed by 
their class interests, there would be a minority of each 
in whom that consideration would be subordinate to 
reason, justice, and the good of the whole ; and this 
minority of either, joining with, the whole of the oth- 
er, would turn the scale against any demands of their 
own majority which were not such as ought to pre- 
vail. The reason why, in any tolerably constituted 
society, justice and the general interest mostly in the 
end carry their point, is that the separate and selfish 
interests of mankind are almost always divided ; some 
are interested in what is wrong, but some, also, have 
their private interest on the side of what is right; 
and those who are governed by higher considerations, 
though too few and weak to prevail alone, usually, 



OF KEPKESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 143 

after sufficient discussion and agitation, become strong 
enough to turn the balance in favor of the body of 
private interests which is on the same side with them. 
The representative system ought to be so constituted 
as to maintain this state of things ; it ought not to 
allow any of the various sectional interests to be so 
powerful as to be capable of prevailing against truth 
and justice, and the other sectional interests combined. 
There ought always to be such a balance preserved 
among personal interests as may render any one of 
them dependent for its successes on carrying with it 
at least a large proportion of those who act upon 
higher motives, and more comprehensive and distant 
views. 



REPRESENTATION 



CHAPTER VII. 



ONLY. 

It has been seen that the dangers hicident to a rep- 
resentative democracy are of two kinds : danger of a 
low grade of intelligence in the representative body, 
and in the popular opinion which controls it; and 
danger of class legislation on the part of the numer- 
ical majority, these being all composed of the same 
class. We have next to consider how far it is possi- 
ble so to organize the democracy as, without inter- 
fering materially with the characteristi-c benefits of 
democratic government, to do away with these two 
great evils, or at least to abate them in the utmost de- 
gree attainable by human contrivance. 

The common mode of attempting this is by limit- 
ing the democratic character of the representation 
through a more or less restricted suffrage. But there 
is a previous consideration which, duly kept in view^, 
considerably modifies the circumstances which are 
supposed to render such a restriction necessary. A 
completely equal democracy, in a nation in which a 
single class composes the numerical majority, can not 
be divested of certain evils ; but those evils are great- 
ly aggravated by the fact that the democracies which 



OF MINORITIES. 145 

at present exist are not equal, but systematically un- 
equal in favor of the predominant class. Two very 
different ideas are usually confounded under the name 
democracy. The pure idea of democracy, according 
to its definition, is the government of the whole peo- 
ple by the whole people, equally represented. De- 
mocracy, as commonly conceived and hitherto prac- 
ticed, is the government of the whole people by a 
mere majority of the people exclusively represented. 
The former is synonymous with the equality of all 
citizens ; the latter, strangely confounded with it, is a 
government of privilege in favor of the numerical ma- 
jority, who alone possess practically any voice in the 
state. This is the inevitable consequence of the man- 
ner in which the votes are now taken, to the complete 
disfranchisement of minorities. 

The confusion of ideas here is great, but it is so 
easily cleared up that one would suppose the slight- 
est indication would be suf&cient to place the matter 
in its true light before any mind of average intelli- 
gence. It would be so but for the power of habit ; 
owing to which, the simplest idea, if unfamiliar, has 
as great difficulty in making its way to the mind as 
a far more complicated one. That the minority must 
yield to the majority, the smaller number to the great- 
er, is a familiar idea; and accordingly, men think 
there is no necessity for using their minds any far- 
ther, and it does not occur to them that there is any 
medium between allowing the smaller number to be 
equally powerful with the greater, and blotting out 
the smaller number altogether. In a representative 

G 



146 REPRESENTATION 

body actually deliberating, the minority must of course 
be overruled ; and in an equal democracy (since the 
opinions of the constituents, when they insist on them, 
determine those of the representative body), the ma- 
jority of the people, through their representatives, 
will outvote and prevail over the minority and their 
representatives. But does it follow that the minority 
should have no representatives at all? Because the 
majority ought to prevail over the minority, must the 
majority have all the votes, the minority none? Is 
it necessary that the minority should not even be 
heard? Nothing but habit and old association can 
reconcile any reasonable being to the needless injus- 
tice. In a really equal democracy, every or any sec- 
tion would be represented, not disproportionately, but 
proportion atel}^ A majority of the electors would 
always have a majority of the representatives, but a 
minority of the electors would always have a minority 
of the representatives. Man for man, they would be 
as fully represented as the majority. Unless they are, 
there is not equal government, but a government of 
inequalit}^ and privilege: one part of the people rule 
over the rest: there is a part whose fair and equal 
share of influence in the representation is withheld 
from them, contrary to all just government, but, above 
all, contrary to the principle of democracy, which pro- 
fesses equality as its very root and foundation. 

The injustice and violation of principle are not less 
flagrant because those who suffer by them are a mi- 
nority, for there is not equal suffrage where every 
single individual does not count for as much as any 



OF MINORITIES. 147 

other single individual in the community. But it is 
not only the minority who suffer. Democracy, thus 
constituted, does not even attain its ostensible object, 
that of giving the powers of government in all cases 
to the numerical majority. It does something very 
different; it gives them to a majority of the majority, 
who may be, and often are, but a minority of the 
whole. All principles are most effectually tested by 
extreme cases. Suppose, then, that, in a country gov- 
erned by equal and universal suffrage, there is a con- 
tested election in every constituency, and every elec- 
tion is carried by a small majority. The Parliament 
thus brought together represents little more than a 
bare majority of the people. This Parliament pro- 
ceeds to legislate, and adopts important measures by a 
bare majority of itself. What guarantee is there that 
these measures accord with the wishes of a majority 
of the people ? Nearly half the electors, having been 
outvoted at the hustings, have had no influence at all 
in the decision ; and the whole of these may be, a 
majority of them probably are, hostile to the meas- 
ures, having voted against those by whom they have 
been carried. Of the remaining electors, nearly half 
have chosen representatives w^ho, by supposition, have 
voted against the measures. It is possible, therefore, 
and even probable, that the opinion which has pre- 
vailed was agreeable only to a minority of the nation, 
though a majority of that portion of it whom the in- 
stitutions of the country have erected into a ruling- 
class. If democracy means the certain ascendency of 
the majority, there are no means of insuring that, but 



148 REFKESENTATION 

by allowing every individual figure to tell equally in 
the summing up. Any minority left out, either pur- 
posely or by the play of the machinery, gives the 
power not to a majority, biit to a minority in some 
other part of the scale. 

The only answer which can possibly be made to this 
reasoning is, that as different opinions predominate in 
different localities, the opinion which is in a minority 
in some places has a majority in others ; and, on the 
whole, every opinion which exists in the constituen- 
cies obtains its fair share of voices in the representa- 
tion. And this is roughly true in the present state of 
the constituency ; if it were not, the discordance of 
the House with the general sentiment of the country 
would soon become evident. But it would be no lon- 
ger true if the present constituency were much en- 
larged, still less if made co-extensive with the whole 
population ; for in that case the majority in every lo- 
cality would consist of manual laborers ; and when 
there was any question pending on which these classes 
were at issue with the rest of the community, no 
other class could succeed in getting represented any 
where. Even now, is it not a great grievance that in 
every Parliament a very numerous portion of the 
electors, willing and anxious to be represented, have 
no member in the House for whom they have voted ? 
Is it just that every elector of Marylebone is obliged 
to be represented by two nominees of the vestries, ev- 
ery elector of Finsbury or Lambeth by those (as is 
generally believed) of the publicans? The constitu- 
encies to which most of the highly educated and pub- 



OF MINORITIES. 149 

lie-spirited persons in the country belong, those of the 
large towns, are now, in great part, either unrepresent- 
ed or misrepresented. The electors who are on a dif- 
ferent side in party politics from the local majority are 
unrepresented. Of those who are on the same side, 
a large proportion are misrepresented, having been 
obhged to accept the man who had the greatest num- 
ber of supporters in their political party, though his 
opinions may differ from theirs on every other point. 
The state of things is, in some respects, even worse 
than if the minority were not allowed to vote at all ; 
for then, at least the majority might have a member 
who would represent their own best mind ; while now, 
the necessity of not dividing the party, for fear of let- 
ting in its opponents, induces all to vote either for the 
person who first presents himself wearing their colors, 
or for the one brought forward by their local leaders ; 
and these, if we pay them the compliment, which they 
very seldom deserve, of supposing their choice to be 
unbiased by their personal interests, are compelled, 
that they may be sure of mustering their whole 
strength, to bring forward a candidate whom none of 
the party will strongly object to — that is, a man with- 
out any distinctive peculiarity, any known opinions 
except the shibboleth of the party. This is strikingly 
exemplified in the United States, where, at the election 
of President, the strongest party never dares put for- 
ward any of its strongest men, because every one of 
these, from the mere fact that he has been long in the 
public eye, has made himself objectionable to some 
portion or other of the party, and is therefore not so 



150 EEPliESENTATION 

sure a card for rallying all their votes as a person wlio 
has never been heard of by the public at all until he 
is produced as the candidate. Thus the man who is 
chosen, even by the strongest party, represents per- 
haps the real wishes only of the narrow margin by 
which that party outnumbers the other. Any section 
whose support is necessary to success possesses a veto 
on the candidate. Any section which holds out more 
obstinately than the rest can compel all the others to 
adopt its nominee ; and this superior pertinacity is un- 
happily more likely to be found among those who are 
holding out for their own interest than for that of the 
public. Speaking generally, the choice of the major- 
ity is determined by that portion of the body who are 
the most timid, the most narrow-minded and preju- 
diced, or who cling most tenaciously to the exclusive 
class interest ; and the electoral rights of the minority, 
while useless for the purposes for which votes are 
given, serve only for compelling the majority to accept 
the candidate of the weakest or worst portion of them- 
selves. 

That, while recognizing these evils, many should 
consider them as the necessary price paid for a free 
government, is in no way surprising ; it was the opin- 
ion of all the friends of freedom up to a recent period. 
But the habit of passing them over as irremediable 
has become so inveterate, that many persons seem to 
have lost the capacity of looking ^t them as things 
which they would be glad to remedy if they could. 
From despairing of a cure, there is too often but one 
step to denying the disease; and from this follows 



OF MINORITIES. 151 

dislike to having a remedy proposed, as if the pro- 
poser were creating a mischief instead of offering re- 
lief from one. People are so inured to the evils that 
they feel as if it were unreasonable, if not wrong, to 
complain of them. Yet, avoidable or not, he must be 
a purblind lover of liberty on whose mind they do 
not weigh ; who would not rejoice at the discovery 
that they could be dispensed with. Now nothing is 
more certain than that the virtual blotting out of the 
minority is no necessary or natural consequence of 
freedom ; that, far from having any connection with 
democracy, it is diametrically opposed to the first prin- 
ciple of democracy, representation in proportion to 
numbers. It is an essential part of democracy that 
minorities should be adequately represented. No real 
democracy, nothing but a false show of democracy, is 
possible without it. 

Those who have seen and felt, in some degree, the 
force of these considerations, have proposed various 
expedients by which the evil may be, in a greater or 
• less degree, mitigated. Lord John Eussell, in one of 
his Eeform Bills, introduced a provision that certain 
constituencies should return three members, and that 
in these each elector should be allowed to vote only 
for two ; and Mr. Disraeli, in the recent debates, re- 
vived the memory of the fact by reproaching him for 
it, being of opinion, apparently, that it befits a Con- 
servative statesman to regard only means, and to dis- 
own scornfully all fellow-feeling w4th any one who is 
betrayed, even once, into thinking of ends.* Others 
* This blunder of Mr. Disraeli (from which, greatly to his credit, 



152 KEPRESENTATION 

have proposed that eacli elector should be allowed to 
vote only for one. By either of these plans, a minor- 
ity equaling or exceeding a third of the local constit- 
uency would be able, if it attempted no more, to re- 
turn one out of three members. The same result 
might be attained in a still better way if, as proposed 
in an able pamphlet by Mr. James Garth Marshall, 
the elector retained his three votes, but was at liberty 
to bestow them all upon the same candidate. These 
schemes, though infinitely better than none at all, are 
yet but makeshifts, and attain the end in a very im- 
perfect manner, since all local minorities of less than 
a third, and all minorities, however numerous, which 
are made up from several constituencies, would re- 
main unrepresented. It is much to be lamented, how- 
ever, that none of these plans have been carried into 

Sir Jolin Pakington took an opportunity soon after of separating him- 
self) is a speaking instance, among many, how little the Conservative 
leaders understand Conservative principles. Without presuming to 
require from political parties such an amount of virtue and discern- 
ment as that they should comprehend, and know when to apply, the* 
principles of their opponents, we may yet say that it would be a great 
improvement if each party understood and acted upon its own. Well 
would it be for England if Conservatives voted consistently for every 
thing conservative, and Liberals for every thing liberal. We should 
not then have to wait long for things which, like the present and 
many other great measures, are eminently both the one and the other. 
The Conservatives, as being by the law of their existence the stupid- 
est party, have much the greatest sins of this description to answer 
for ; and it is a melancholy truth, that if any measure were proposed 
on any subject truly, largely, and far-sightedly conservative, even if 
Liberals were willing to vote for it, the great bulk of the Conservative 
party would rush blindly in and prevent it from being carried. 



OF MINOKITIES. 158 

effect, as any of them would have recognized the right 
principle, and prepared the way for its more complete 
application. Bat real equality of representation is 
not obtained unless any set of electors amounting to 
the average number of a constituency, wherever in 
the country they happen to reside, have the power of 
combining with one another to return a representative. 
This degree of perfection in representation appeared 
impracticable until a man of great capacity, fitted alike 
for large general views and for the contrivance of 
practical details — Mr. Thomas Hare — had proved its 
possibility by drawing up a scheme for its accom- 
plishment, embodied in a Draft of an Act of Parlia- 
ment; a scheme which has the almost unparalleled 
merit of carrying out a great principle of government 
in a manner approaching to ideal perfection as regards 
the special object in view, while it attains incidentally 
several other ends of scarcely inferior importance. 

According to this plan, the unit of representation, 
the quota of electors who would be entitled to have 
a member to themselves, would be ascertained by the 
ordinary process of taking averages, the number of 
voters being divided by the number of seats in the 
House ; and every candidate who obtained that quota 
would be returned, from however great a number of 
local constituencies it might be gathered. The votes 
would, as at present, be given locally, but any elector 
would be at liberty to vote for any candidate, in what- 
ever part of the country he might offer himself Those 
electors, therefore, who did not wish to he represented 
by any of the local candidates, might aid by their 
G2 



154 REPRESENTATION 

vote in the return of the person they liked best among 
all those throughout the country who had expressed 
a willingness to be chosen. This would so far give 
reality to the electoral rights of the otherwise virtu- 
ally disfranchised minority. But it is important that 
not those alone who refuse to vote for any of the local 
candidates, but those also who vote for one of them 
and are defeated, should be enabled to find elsewhere 
the representation which they have not succeeded in 
obtaining in their own district. It is therefore pro- 
vided that an elector may deliver a voting paper con- 
taining other names in addition to the one which 
stands foremost in his preference. His vote would 
only be counted for one candidate ; but if the object of 
his first choice failed to be returned, from not having 
obtained the quota, his second perhaps might be more 
fortunate. He may extend his list to a greater num- 
ber in the order of his preference, so that if the names 
•which stand near the top of the list either can not 
make up the quota, or are able to make it up without 
his vote, the vote may still be used for some one whom 
it may assist in returning. To obtain the full num- 
ber of members required to complete the House, as 
well as to prevent very popular candidates from en- 
grossing nearly all the suffrages, it is necessary, how- 
ever many votes a candidate may obtain, that no more 
of them than the quota should be counted for his re- 
turn ; the remainder of those who voted for him would 
have their votes counted for the next person on their 
respective lists vf ho needed them, and could by their 
aid complete the quota. To determine which of a 



i 



OF MINOKITIES. 155 

candidate's votes should be used for his return, and 
which set free for others, several methods are proposed, 
into which we shall not here enter. He would, of 
course, retain the votes of all those who would not 
otherwise be represented ; and for the remainder, 
drawing lots, in default of better, would be an unob- 
jectionable expedient. The voting papers would be 
conveyed to a central office, where the votes would be 
counted, the number of first, second, third, and other 
votes given for each candidate ascertained, and the 
quota would be allotted to every one who could make 
it up, until the number of the House was complete ; 
first votes being preferred to second, second to third, 
and so forth. The voting papers, and all the elements 
of the calculation, would be placed in public reposito- 
ries, accessible to all whom they concerned ; and if 
any one who had obtained the quota was not duly re- 
turned, it would be in his power easily to prove it. 

These are the main provisions of the scheme. For 
a more minute knowledge of its very simple ma- 
chinery, I must refer to Mr. Hare's "Treatise on the 
Election of Eepresentatives" (a small volume pub- 
lished in 1859), and to a pamphlet by Mr. Henry 
Fawcett, published in 1860, and entitled " Mr. Hare's 
Eeform Bill simplified and explained." This last is 
a very clear and concise exposition of the plan, re- 
duced to its simplest elements by the omission of some 
of Mr. Hare's original provisions, which, though in 
themselves beneficial, were thought to take more from 
the simplicity of the scheme than they added to its 
practical advantages. The more these works axe 



156 REPRESENTATION 

studied, the stronger, I venture to predict, will be the 
impression of the perfect feasibility of the scheme and 
its transcendent advantages. Such and so numerous 
are these, that, in my conviction, they place Mr. Hare's 
plan among the very greatest improvements 37et made 
in the theory and practice of government. 

In the first place, it secures a representation, in pro- 
portion to numbers, of every division of the electoral 
body : not two great parties alone, with perhaps a 
few large sectional minorities in particular places, but 
every minority in the whole nation, consisting of a 
sufiiciently large number to be, on principles of equal 
justice, entitled to a representative. Secondly, no 
elector would, as at present, be nominally represented 
by some one whom he had not chosen. Every mem- 
ber of the House would be the representative of a 
unanimous constituency. He would represent a thou- 
sand electors, or two thousand, or five thousand, or 
ten thousand, as the^ quota might be, every one of 
whom would have not only voted for him, but select- 
ed him from the whole country, not merely from the 
assortment of two or three perhaps rotten oranges, 
which may be the only choice offered to him in his 
local market. Under this relation the tie between 
the elector and the representative would be of a 
strength and a value of which at present we have no 
experience. Every one of the electors would be per- 
sonally identified with his representative, and the rep- 
resentative with his constituents. Every elector who 
voted for him would have done so either because he 
is the person, in the whole list of candidates for Par- 



OF MINOEITIES. 157 

liament, who best expresses the voter's own opinions, 
or because he is one of those whose abilities and char- 
acter the voter most respects, and whom he most will- 
ingly trusts to think for him. The member would 
represent persons, not the mere bricks and mortar of 
the town — the voters themselves, not a few vestry- 
men or parish notabilities merely. All, however, 
that is worth preserving in the representation of 
places would be preserved. Though the Parliament 
of the nation ought to have as little as possible to do 
with purely local affairs, yet, while it has to do with 
them, there ought to be members specially commis- 
sioned to look after the interests of every important 
locality ; and these there would still be. In every 
locality which contained many more voters than the 
quota (and there probably ought to be no local con- 
stituency which does not), the majority would gen- 
erally prefer to be represented by one of themselves ; 
by a person of local knowledge, and residing in the 
locality, if there is any such person to be found among 
the candidates, who is otherwise eligible as their rep- 
resentative. It would be the minorities chiefly, who, 
being unable to return the local member, would look 
out elsewhere for a candidate likely to obtain other 
votes in addition to their own. 

Of all modes in which a national representation 
can possibly be constituted, this one affords the best 
security for the intellectual qualifications desirable 
in the representatives. At present, by universal ad- 
mission, it is becoming more ancj more difficult for 
any one who has only talents and character to gain 



158 KEPKESENTATION 

admission into the House of Commons. The only 
persons who can get elected are those who possess lo- 
cal influence, or make their way by lavish expendi- 
ture, or who, on the invitation of three or four trades- 
men or attorneys, are sent down by one of the two 
great parties from their London clubs as men whose 
votes the party can depend on under all circum- 
stances. On Mr. Hare's system, those who did not 
like the local candidates would fill up their voting 
papers by a selection from all the persons of national 
reputation on the list of candidates with whose gen- 
eral political principles they v/cre in sympathy. Al- 
most every person, therefore, who had made himself 
in any way honorably distinguished, though devoid 
of local influence, and having sworn allegiance to no 
political party, would have a fair chance of making 
up the quota, and with this encouragement such per- 
sons might be expected to offer themselves in num- 
bers hitherto undreamed of. Hundreds of able men 
of independent thought, who would have no chance 
whatever of being chosen by the majority of any ex- 
isting constituency, have by their writings, or their 
exertions in some field of public usefulness, made 
themselves known and approved by a few persons in 
almost every district of the kingdom ; and if every 
vote that would be given for them in every place 
could be counted for their election, they might be 
able to complete the number of the quota. In no 
other way which it seems possible to suggest would 
Parliament be so certain of containing the very elite 
of the country. 



OF MINOKITIES. 159 

And it is not solely through the votes of minorities 
that this system of election would raise the intellectual 
standard of the House of Commons. Majorities would 
be compelled to look out for members of a much high- 
er calibre. When the individuals composing the ma- 
jority would no longer be reduced to Hobson's choice, 
of either voting for the person brought forward by 
their local leaders, or not voting at all ; when the nom- 
inee of the leaders would have to encounter the com- 
petition not solely of the candidate of the minority, 
but of all the men of established reputation in the 
country who were willing to serve, it would be impos- 
sible any longer to foist upon the electors the first per- 
son who presents himself with the catchwords of the 
party in his mouth, and three or four thousand pounds 
in his pocket. The majority would insist on having 
a candidate worthy of their choice, or they would car- 
ry their votes somewhere else, and the minority would 
prevail. The slavery of the majority to the least es- 
timable portion of their numbers would be at an end ; 
the very best and most capable of the local notabili- 
ties would be put forward by preference ; if possible, 
such as were known in some advantageous way be- 
yond the locality, that their local strength might have 
a chance of being fortified by stray votes from else- 
where. Constituencies would become competitors for 
the best candidates, and would vie with one another in 
selecting from among the men of local knowledge and 
connections those who were most distinguished in ev- 
ery other respect. 

The natural tendency of representative government, \ 



160 REPRESENTATION 

as of modern civilization, is toward collective medioc- 
rity ; and this tendency is increased by all reductions ' 
af!d extensions of the franchise, their effect being to 
place the principal power in the hands of classes more 
and more below the highest level of instruction in the 
community. But, though the superior intellects and 
characters will necessarily be outnumbered, it makes 
a great difference whether or not they are heard. In 
the false democracy which, instead of giving represent- 
ation to all, gives it only to the local majorities, the 
voice of the instructed minority may have no organs 
at all in the representative body. It is an admitted 
fact that in the American democracy, which is con- 
structed on this faulty model, the highly - cultivated 
members of the community, except such of them as 
are willing to sacrifice their own opinions and modes 
of judgment, and become the servile mouthpieces of 
their inferiors in knowledge, do not even offer them- 
selves for Congress or the State Legislatures, so cer- 
tain is it that they would have no chance of being re- 
turned. Had a plan like Mr. Hare's by good fortune 
suggested itself to the enlightened and disinterested 
founders of the American Eepublic, the federal and 
state assemblies would have contained many of these 
distinguished men, and democracy would have been 
spared its greatest reproach and one of its most formi- 
dable evils. Against this evil the system of personal 
representation proposed by Mr. Hare is almost a spe- 
cific. The minority of instructed minds scattered 
through the local constituencies would unite to return 
a number, proportioned to their own numbers, of the 



OF MINORITIES. 161 

very ablest men the country contains. They would 
be under the strongest inducement to choose such 
men, since in no other mode could they make their 
small numerical strength tell for any thing considera- 
ble. The representatives of the majority, besides that 
they would themselves be improved in quality by the 
operation of the system, would no longer have the 
whole field to themselves. They would indeed out- 
number the others, as much as the one class of elect- 
ors outnumbers the other in the country : they could 
always outvote them, but they would speak and vote 
in their presence, and subject to their criticism. When 
any difference arose, they would have to meet the ar- 
guments of the instructed few by reasons, at least ap- 
parently, as cogent ; and since they could not, as those 
do who are speaking to persons already unanimous, 
simply assume that they are in the right, it would oc- 
casionally happen to them to become convinced that 
they were in the wrong. As they would in general 
be well-meaning (for thus much may reasonably be 
expected from a fairly-chosen national representation), 
their own minds would be insensibly raised by the in- 
fluence of the minds with which they were in contact, 
or even in conflict. The champions of unpopular doc-^ 
trines would not put forth their arguments merely in 
books and periodicals, read only by their own side ; 
the opposing ranks would meet face to face and hand 
to hand, and there would be a fair comparison of their 
intellectual strength in the presence 'bf the country. 
It would then be found out whether the opinion which 
prevailed by counting votes would also prevail if the 



162 REPRESENTATION 

votes were weighed as well as counted. The mul- 
titude have often a true instinct fur distinguishing an 
able man when he has the means of displaying his 
ability in a fair field before them. If such a man fails 
to obtain any portion whatever of his just weight, it is 
through institutions or usages which keep him out of 
sight. In the old democracies there were no means 
/ of keeping out of sight any able man ; the bema was 
open to him; he needed nobody's consent to become 
a public adviser. It is not so in a representative gov- 
ernment; and the best friends of representative de- 
mocracy can hardly be without misgivings that the 
Theraistocles or Demosthenes whose counsels vvould 
have saved the nation, might be unable during his 
whole life ever to obtain a seat. But if the presence 
in the representative assembly can be insured of even 
a few of the first minds in the country, though the re- 
mainder consist only of average minds, the influence 
of these leading spirits is sure to make itself insensi- 
bly felt in the general deliberations, even though they 
be known to be, in many respects, opposed to the tone 
of popular opinion and feeling. I am unable to con- 
ceive any mode by which the presence of such minds 
can be so positively insured as by that proposed hj 
Mr. Hare. 

This portion of the assembly would also be the ap- 
propriate organ of a great social function, for which 
there is no provision in any existing democracy, but 
which in no government can remain permanent!}^ un- 
fulfilled without condemning that government to in- 
fallible degeneracy and decay. This may be called 



OF MINORITIES. 163 

the function of Antagonism. In every government 
tl^ere is some power stronger than all the rest, and 
the power which is strongest tends perpetually to be- 
come the sole power. Partly by intention and part- 
ly unconsciously, it is ever striving to make all other 
things bend to itself, and is not content while there is 
any thing which makes permanent head against it, 
any influence not in agreement with its spirit. Yet, 
if it succeeds in suppressing all rival influences, and 
moulding every thing after its own model, improve- 
ment, in that country, is at an end, and decline com- 
mences. Human improvement is a product of many 
factors, and no power ever yet constituted among 
mankind includes them all : even the most beneficent 
power only contains in itself some of the requisites 
of good, and the remainder, if progress is to continue, 
must be derived from some other source. No com- 
munity has ever long continued progressive but while 
a conflict was going on between the strongest power 
in the community and some rival power ; between 
the spiritual and temporal authorities ; the military 
or territorial and the industrious classes ; the king 
and the people; the orthodqx and religious reform- 
ers. When the victory on either side was so com- 
plete as to put an end to the strife, and no other con- 
flict took its place, first stagnation followed, and then 
decay. The ascendency of the numerical majority is 
less unjust, and, on the whole, less mischievous than 
many others, but it is attended with the very same 
kind of dangers, and even more certainly ; for when 
the government is in the hands of One or a Few, the 



1 64 KEPKESE]N' TATi U X 

Many are always existent as a rival power, which 
may not be strong enough ever to control the other, 
but whose opinion and sentiment are a moral, and 
even a social support to all who, either from convic- 
tion or contrariety of interest, are opposed to any of 
the tendencies of the ruling authority. But when the 
democracy is supreme, there is no One or Few strong- 
enough for dissentient opinions and injured or men- 
aced interests to lean upon. The great difficulty of 
democratic government has hitherto seemed to be, 
how to provide in a democratic society — what cir- 
cumstances have provided hitherto in all the societies 
which have maintained themselves ahead of others — 
a social support, a ;point d^appui^ for individual resist- 
ance to the tendencies of the ruling power ; a protec- 
tion, a rallying-point for opinions and interests which 
the ascendant public opinion views with disfavor. 
For want of such sl point d^appui, the older societies, 
and all but a few modern ones, either fell into disso- 
lution or became stationary (which means slow dete- 
rioration) through the exclusive predominance of a 
part only of the conditions of social and mental well- 
being. 

Now this great want the system of Personal Eepre- 
sentation is fitted to supply in the most perfect man- 
ner which the circumstances of modern society admit 
of. The only quarter in which to look for a supple- 
/ ment, or completing corrective to the instincts of a 
\ democratic majority, is the instructed minority; but, 
in the ordinary mode of constituting democracy, this 
minority has no organ : Mr. Hare's system provides 



OF MINORITIES. 165 

one. The representatives who would be returned to 
Parliament by the aggregate of minorities would af- 
ford that organ in its greatest perfection. A separate 
organization of the instructed classes, even if practica- 
ble, would be invidious, and could onl}^ escape from 
being offensive by being totally without influence. 
But if the elite of these classes formed part of the Par- 
liament, by the same title as any other of its mem- 
bers — by representing the same number of citizens, 
the same numerical fraction of the national will — 
their presence could give umbrage to nobody, while 
they would be in the position of highest vantage, both 
for making their opinions and counsels heard on all 
important subjects, and for taking an active part in 
public business. Their abilities would probably draw 
to them more than their numerical share of the actual 
administration of government ; as the Athenians did 
not confide responsible public functions to Cleon or 
Ilyperbolus (the employment of Cleon at Pylus and 
Amphipolis was purely exceptional), but Nicias, and 
Theramenes, and Alcibiades were in constant employ- 
ment both at home and abroad, though known to 
sympathize more with oligarchy than with democ- 
racy. The instructed minority would, in the actual 
voting, count only for their numbers, but as a moral 
power they would count for much more, in virtue of 
their knowledge, and of the influence it would give 
them over the rest. An arrangement better adapted 
to keep popular opinion within reason and justice, 
and to guard it from the various deteriorating influ- 
ences which assail the weak side of democracy, could 
scarcely by. human ingenuity be devised. A demo- 



166 REPEESENTATION 

cratic people would in this way be provided with 
what in any other way it would almost certainly miss 
— leaders of a higher grade of intellect and character 
than itself. Modern democracy w^ould have its occa- 
sional Pericles, and its habitual group of superior and 
guiding minds. 

With all this array of reasons, of the most funda- 
mental character, on the affirmative side of the ques- 
tion, what is there on the negative? Nothing that 
will sustain examination when people can once be in- 
duced to bestow any real examination upon a new 
thing. Those indeed, if any such there be, who, un- 
der pretense of equal justice, aim only at substituting 
the class ascendency of the poor for that of the rich, 
will of course be unfavorable to a scheme which places 
both on a level. But 1 do not believe that any such 
wish exists at present among the working classes of 
this country, though I would not answer for the effect 
which opportunity and demagogic artifices may here- 
after have in exciting it. In the United States, where 
the numerical majority have long been in full posses- 
sion of collective despotism, they would probably be 
as unwilling to part with it as a single despot or an 
aristocracy. But I believe that the English democra- 
cy would as yet be content with protection against 
the class legislation of others, without claiming the 
power to exercise it in their turn. 

Among the ostensible objectors to Mr. Hare's scheme, 
some profess to think the plan unworkable ; but these, 
it will be found, are generally people who have bare- 
ly heard of it, or have given it a very slight and cur- 
sorv examination. Others are unable to reconcile 



OF MINORITIES. 167 

themselves to the loss of what they term the local 
character of the representation. A nation does not 
seem to them to consist of persons, but of artificial 
units, the creation of geography and statistics. Par- 
liament must represent towns and counties, not human 
beings. But no one seeks to annihilate towns and 
counties. Towns and counties, it may be presumed, 
are represented when the human beings who inhabit 
them are represented. Local feelings can not exist 
without somebody who feels them, nor local interests 
without somebody interested in them. If the human 
beings whose feelings and interests these are have 
their proper share of representation, these feelings and 
interests are represented in common with all other 
feelings and interests of those persons. But I can not 
see why the feelings and interests which arrange man- 
kind according to localities should be the only ones 
thought worthy of being represented, or why people 
who have other feelings and interests, which they val- 
ue more than they do their geographical ones, should 
be restricted to these as the sole principle of their po- 
litical classification. The notions that Yorkshire and 
Middlesex have rights apart from those of their inhab- 
itants, or that Liverpool and Exeter are the proper 
objects of the legislator's care, in contradistinction to 
the population of those places, is a curious specimen 
of delusion produced by words. 

In general, however, objectors cut the matter short 
by affirming that the people of England will never 
consent to such a system. What the people of En- 
gland are likely to think of those who pass such a 
summary sentence on their capacity of understand- 



168 REPRESENTATION OF MINORITII.^. 

ing and judgment, deeming it superfluous to consider 
whether a thing is right or wrong before affirming 
that they are certain to reject it, I will not undertake 
to say. For my own part, I do not think that the 
people of England have deserved to be, without trial, 
stigmatized as insurmountably prejudiced against any 
thing which can be proved to be good either for them- 
selves or for others. It also appears to me that when 
})rejudices persist obstinately, it is the fault of nobody 
so much as of those who make a point of proclaiming 
them insuperable, as an excuse to themselves for nev- 
er joining in an attempt to remove them. Any prej- 
udice whatever will be insurmountable if those who 
do not share it themselves truckle to it, and flatter it, 
and accept it as a law of nature. I believe, however, 
that of prejudice, properly speaking, there is in this 
case none except on the lips of those who talk about 
it, and that there is in general, among those who have 
yet heard of the proposition, no other hostility to it 
than the natural and healthy distrust attaching to all 
novelties which have not been sufficiently canvassed 
to make generally manifest all the pros and cons of 
the question. The only serious obstacle is the unfa- 
miliarity : this, indeed, is a formidable one, for the im- 
agination much more easily reconciles itself to a great 
alteration in substance than to a very small one in 
names and forms. But unfamiliarity is a disadvan- 
tage which, when there is any real value in an idea, it 
only requires time to remove ; .and in these days of 
discussion and geiierally awakened interest in im- 
provement, what formerly was the work of centuries 
often requires only years. 



EXTENSION OF THE SUFFRAGE. 169 



CHAPTER YIIL 

OF THS EXTENSION OF THE SUFFRAGE. 

Such a representative democracy as has now been 
sketched — representative of all, and not solely of the 
majority — in which the interests, the opinions, the 
grades of intellect which are outnumbered would nev- 
ertheless be heard, and would have a chance of obtain- 
ing by weight of character and strength of argument 
an influence which would not belong to their numer- 
ical force — this democracy, which is alone equal, alone 
impartial, alone the government of all by all, the only 
true type of democracy, would be free from the great- 
est evils of the falsely -called democracies which now 
prevail, and from which the current idea of democracy 
is exclusively derived. But even in this democracy, 
absolute power, if they chose to exercise it, would rest 
with the numerical majority, and these would be com- 
posed exclusively of a single class, alike in biases, 
prepossessions, and general modes of thinking, and a 
class, to say no more, not the most highly cultivated. 
The constitution would therefore still be liable to the 
characteristic evils of class government ; in a far less 
degree, assuredly, than that exclusive government by 
a class which now usurps the name of democracy, but 
still under no effective restraint except what might 
be found in the good sense, moderation, and forbear- 

H 



170 EXTENSION OF 

ance of the class itself. If checks of this description 
are sufficient, the philosopy of constitutional govern- 
ment is but solemn trifling. All trust in constitutions 
is grounded on the assurance they may afford, not that 
the depositaries of power will not, but that they can 
not misemploy it. Democracy is not the ideally best 
form of government unless this weak*side of it can 
be strengthened ; unless it can be so organized that 
no class, not even the most numerous, shall be able 
to reduce all but itself to political insignificance, and 
direct the course of legislation and administration by 
its exclusive class interest. The problem is to find 
the means of preventing this abuse without sacrificing 
the characteristic advantages of popular government. 
These twofold requisites are not fulfilled by the ex- 
pedient of a limitation of the suffrage, involving the 
compulsory exclusion of any portion of the citizens 
from a voice in the representation. Among the forC' 
most benefits of free government is that education of 
the intelligence and of the sentiments which is car- 
ried down to the very lowest ranks of the people when 
they are called to take a part in acts which directly 
affect the great interests of their country. On this 
topic I have already dwelt so emphatically that I 
only return to it because there are few who seem to 
attach to this effect of popular institutions all the 
importance to which it is entitled. People think it 
fanciful to expect so much from what seems so slight 
a cause — to recognize a potent instrument of mental 
improvement in the exercise of political franchises by 
manual laborers. Yet, "unless substantial mental cuk 



THE SUFFEAGE. 171 

tivation in the mass of mankind is to be a mere vision, 
this is the road by which it must come. If any one 
supposes that this road will not bring it, I call to wit- 
ness the entire contents of M. de Tocqueville's great 
work, and especially kis estimate of the Americans. 
Almost all travelers are struck by the fact that every 
American is in some sense both a patriot and a per- 
son of cultivated intelligence ; and M. de Tocqueville 
has shown how close the connection is between these 
qualities and their democratic institutions. No such 
wide diffusion of the ideas, tastes, and sentiments of 
educated minds has ever been seen elsewhere, or even 
conceived of as attainable. Yet this is nothing to 
what we might look for in a government equally 
democratic in its unexclusiveness, but better organ- 
ized in other important points. For political life is 
indeed in America a most valuable school, but it is a 
school from which the ablest teachers are excluded ; 
the first minds in the country being as effectually shut 
out from the national representation, and from public 
functions generally, as if they were under a formal 
disqualification. The Demos, too, being in America 
the one source of power, all the selfish ambition of 
the country gravitates toward it, as it does in despotic 
countries toward the monarch ; the People, like the 
despot, is pursued with adulation and sycophancy, and 
the corrupting effects of power fully keep pace with 
its improving and ennobling influences. If, even with 
this alloy, democratic institutions produce so marked 
a superiority of mental development in the lowest 
class of Americans, compared with the corresponding 



172 EXTENSION OF 

classes in England and elsewhere, what would it be 
if the good portion of the influence could be retained 
without the bad ? And this, to a certain extent, may 
be done, but not by excluding that portion of the 
people who have fewest intellectual stimuli of other 
kinds from so inestimable an introduction to large, 
distant, and complicated interests as is afforded by 
the attention they may be induced to bestow on po- 
litical affairs. It is by political discussion that the 
manual laborer, whose employment is a routine, and 
whose way of life brings him in contact with no va- 
riety of impressions, circumstances, or ideas, is taught 
that remote causes, and events which take place far 
off, have a most sensible effect even on his personal 
interests ; and it is from political discussion and col- 
lective political action that one whose daily occupa- 
tions concentrate his interests in a small circle round 
himself, learns to feel for and with his fellow-citizens, 
and becomes consciously a member of a great com- 
munity. But political discussions fly over the heads 
of those who have no votes, and are not endeavoring 
to acquire them. Their position, in comparison with 
the electors, is that of the audience in a court of jus- 
tice compared with the twelve men in the jury-box. 
It is not their suffrages that are asked, it is not their 
opinion that is sought to be influenced; the appeals 
are made, the arguments addressed, to others than 
them ; nothing depends on the decision they may ar- 
rive at, and there is no necessity and very little in- 
ducement to them to come to any. Whoever, in an 
otherwise popular government, has no vote, and no 



THE SUFFKAGE. 173 

prospect of obtaining it, will either be a permanent 
malcontent, or will feel as one whom the general af- 
fairs of society do not concern ; for whom they are to 
be managed by others ; who " has no business with 
the laws except to obey them," nor with public inter- 
ests and concerns except as a looker-on. What he 
will know or care about them from this position may 
partly be measured by what an average woman of the 
middle class knows and cares about politics compared 
with her husband or brothers. 

Independently of all these considerations, it is a per- 
sonal injustice to withhold from any one, unless for 
the prevention of greater evils, the ordinary privilege 
of having his voice reckoned in the disposal of affairs 
in which he has the same interest as other people. 
If he is compelled to pay, if he may be compelled to 
fight, if he is required implicitly to obey, he should 
be legally entitled to be told what for; to have his 
consent asked, and his opinion counted at its worth, 
though not at more than its worth. There ought to 
be no pariahs in a full-grown and civilized nation; 
no persons disqualified except through their own de- 
fault. Every one is degraded, whether aware of it or 
not, when other people, without consulting him, take 
upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his des- 
tiny. And even in a much more improved state than 
the human mind has ever yet reached, it is not in na- 
ture that they who are thus disposed of should meet 
with as fair play as those who have a voice. Kulers 
and ruling classes are under a necessity of considering 
the interests and wishes of those who have the suf- 



174 EXTENSION OF 

frage ; but of those who are excluded, it is in their 
option whether they will do so or not ; and, however 
honestly disposed, they are, in general, too fully occu- 
pied with things which they must attend to to have 
much room in their thoughts for any thing which 
they can with impunity disregard. No arrangement 
of the suffrage, therefore, can be permanently satis- 
factory in which any person or class is peremptorily 
excluded — in which the electoral privilege is not open 
to all persons of full age who desire to obtain it. 

There are, however, certain exclusions, required by 
positive reasons, which do not conflict with this prin- 
ciple, and which, though an evil in themselves, are 
only to be got rid of by the cessation of the state of 
things which requires them. I regard it as wholly 
inadmissible that any person should participate in the 
suffrage without being able to read, write, and, I will 
add, perform the common operations of arithmetic. 
Justice demands, even when the suffrage does not de- 
pend on it, that the means of attaining these element- 
ary acquirements should be within the reach of every 
person, either gratuitously, or at an expense not ex- 
ceeding what the poorest, who can earn their own 
living, can afford. If this were really the case, people 
would no more think of giving the suffrage to a man 
who could not read, than of giving it to a child who 
could not speak; and it would not be society that 
would exclude him^ but his own laziness. When so- 
ciety has not performed its duty by rendering this 
amount of instruction accessible to all, there is some 
hardship in the case, but it is a hardship that ought 



THE SUFFRAGE. 175 

to be borne. If society has neglected to discharge 
two solemn obligations, the more important and more 
fundamental of the two must be fulfilled first ; uni- 
versal teaching must precede universal enfranchise- 
ment. No one but those in whom an a priori theory 
has silenced common sense will maintain that power 
over others, over the whole community, should be 
imparted to people who have not acquired the com- 
monest and most essential requisites for taking care 
of themselves — for pursuing intelligently their own 
interests, and those of the persons most nearly allied 
to them. This argument, doubtless, might be pressed 
farther, and made to prove much more. It would be 
eminently desirable that other things besides reading, 
writing, and arithmetic could be made necessary to 
the suffrage ; that some knowledge of the conforma- 
tion of the earth, its natural and political divisions, 
the elements of general history, and of the history and 
institutions of their own country, could be required 
from all electors. But these kinds of knowledge, how- 
ever indispensable to an intelligent use of the suffrage, 
are not, in this country, nor probably any where save 
in the ISTorthern United States, accessible to the whole 
people, nor does there exist any trustworthy machinery 
for ascertaining whether they have been acquired or 
not. The attempt, at present, would lead to partiality, 
chicanery, and every kind of fraud. It is better that 
the suffrage should be conferred indiscriminately, or 
even withheld indiscriminately, than thg* it should be 
given to one and withheld from another at the discre- 
tion of a public officer. In regard, however, to read- 



176 EXTENSION OF 

ing, writing, and calculating, there need be no diffi- 
cultjr. It would be easy to require from every one 
who presented himself for registry that he should, in 
the presence of the registrar, copy a sentence from an 
English book, and perform a sum in the rule of three ; 
and to secure, by fixed rules and complete publicity, 
the honest application of so very simple a test. This 
condition, therefore, should in all cases accompany 
universal suffrage ; and it would, after a few years, 
exclude none but those who cared so little for the 
privilege that their vote, if given, would not be an in- 
dication of any real political opinion. 

It is also important that the assembly which votes 
the taxes, either general or local, should be elected 
exclusively by those who pay something toward the 
taxes imposed. Those who pay no taxes, disposing 
by their votes of other people's money, have every 
motive to be lavish and none to economize. As far 
as money matters are concerned, any power of voting 
possessed by them is a violation of the fundamental 
principle of free government, a severance of the power 
of control from the interest in its beneficial exercise. 
It amounts to allowing them to put their hands into 
other people's pockets for any purpose which they 
think fit to call a public one, which, in the great 
towns of the United States, is known to have pro- 
duced a scale of local taxation onerous beyond exam- 
ple, and wholly borne by the wealthier classes. That 
representatioii should be coextensive with taxation, 
not stopping short of it, but also not going beyond it, 
is in accordance with the theory of British institutions. 



THE SUFFRAGE. 177 

But to reconcile this, as a condition annexed to the 
representation, with universality, it is essential, as it 
is on many other accounts desirable, that taxation, in 
a visible shape, should descend to the poorest class. 
In this country, and in most others, there is probably 
no laboring family which does not contribute to the 
indirect taxes by the purchase of tea, coffee, sugar, 
not to mention narcotics or stimulants. But this 
mode of defraying a share of the public expenses is 
hardly felt: the payer, unless a person of education 
and reflection, does not identify his interest with a 
low scale of public expenditure as closely as when 
money for its support is demanded directly from him- 
self; and even supposing him to do so, he would 
doubtless take care that, however lavish an expendi- 
ture he might, by his vote, assist in imposing upon 
the government, it should not be defrayed by any ad- 
ditional taxes on the articles which he himself con- 
sumes. It would be better that a direct tax, in the 
simple form of a capitation, should be levied on every 
grown person in the community, or that every such 
person should be admitted an elector on allowing 
himself to be rated extra ordinem to the assessed taxes, 
or that a small annual payment, rising and falling 
with the gross expenditure of the country, should be 
required from every registered elector, that so every 
one might feel that the money which he assisted in 
voting was partly his own, and that he was interested 
in keeping down its amount. 

However this may be, I regard it as required by 
first principles that the receipt of parish relief should 
H2 



178 EXTENSION OF 

be a peremptory disqualification for the franchise. He 
who can not by his labor suffice for his own support, 
has no claim to the privilege of helping himself to the 
money of others. By becoming dependent on the re- 
maining members of the community for actual sub 
sistence, he abdicates his claim to equal rights witlj 
them in other respects. Those to whom he is in. 
debted for the continuance of his very existence may 
justly claim the exclusive management of those com- 
mon concerns to which he now brings nothing, or 
less than he takes away. As a condition of the fran- 
chise, a term should be fixed, say five years previous 
to the registry, during which the applicant's name has 
not been on the parish books as a recipient of relief. 
To be an uncertificated bankrupt, or to have taken 
the benefit of the Insolvent Act, should disqualify for 
the franchise until the person has paid his debts, or 
at least proved that he is not now, and has not for 
some long period been, dependent on eleemosynary 
support. Non-payment of taxes, when so long per- 
sisted in that it can not have arisen from inadvertence, 
should disqualify while it lasts. These exclusions are 
not in their nature permanent. They exact such con- 
ditions only as all are able, or ought to be able, to ful- 
fill if they choose. They leave the suffrage accessible 
to all who are in the normal condition of a human be- 
ing ; and if any one has to forego it, he either does 
not care sufficiently for it to do for its sake what he 
is already bound to do, or he is in a general condition 
of depression and degradation in which this slight ad- 
dition, necessary for tiie security of others, would be 



THE SUFFRAGE. 179 

unfelt, and on emerging from which this mark of in- 
feriority would disappear with the rest. 

In the long run, therefore (supposing no restrictions 
to exist but those of which we have now treated), we 
might expect that all, except that (it is to be hoped) 
progressively diminishing class, the recipients of par- 
ish relief, would be in possession of votes, so that the 
suffrage would be, with that slight abatement, univer- 
sal. That it should be thus widely expanded is, as 
we have seen, absolutely necessary to an enlarged and 
elevated conception of good government. Yet in this 
state of things, the great majority of voters in most 
countries, and emphatically in this, would be manual 
laborers, and the twofold danger, that of too low a 
standard of political intelligence, and that of class leg- 
islation, would still exist in a very perilous degree. 
It remains to be seen whether any means exist by 
which these evils can be obviated. 

They are capable of being obviated if men sincerely 
wish it ; not by any artificial contrivance, but by car- 
rying out the natural order of human life, which rec- 
ommends itself to every one in things in which he has 
no interest or traditional opinion running counter to 
it. In all human affairs, every person directly inter- 
ested, and not under positive tutelage, has an admit- 
ted claim to a voice, and when his exercise of it is not 
inconsistent with the safety of the whole, can not justly 
be excluded from it. But (though every one ought 
to have a voice) that every one should have an equal 
voice is a totally different proposition. A¥hen two 
pereons who have a joint interest in any business dif- 



180 EXTENSION OF 

fer in opinion, does justice require that both opinions 
should be held of exactly equal value ? If with equal 
virtue, one is superior to the other in knowledge and 
intelligence — or if with equal intelligence, one excels 
the other in virtue — the opinion, the judgment of the 
higher moral or intellectual being is wortb more than 
that of the inferior ; and if the institutions of the 
country virtually assert that they are of the same val- 
ue, they assert the thing which is not. One of the 
two, as the wiser or better man, has a claim to supe- 
rior weight : the difficulty is in ascertaining whicb oi 
the two it is ; a thing impossible as between individ- 
uals, but, taking men in bodies and in numbers, it can 
be done with a sufficient approach to accuracy. There 
would be no pretense for applying this doctrine to any 
case which can with reason be considered as one of 
individual and private right. In an affair which con- 
cerns only one of two persons, that one is entitled to 
follow his own opinion, however much, wiser the other 
may be than himself. But we are speaking of thipgs 
which equally concern them both; where, if the more 
ignorant does not yield his share of the matter to the 
guidance of the wiser man, the wiser man must resign 
his to that of the more ignorant. Which of these 
modes of getting over the difficulty is most for the in- 
terest of both, and most conformable to the general 
fitness of things? If it be deemed unjust that either 
should have to give way, which injustice is greatest? 
that the better judgment should give way to the worse, 
or the worse to the better? 

Now national affairs are exactly such a joint con- 



THE SUFFKAGE. 181 

cern, with the difference that no one needs ever be 
called upon for a complete sacrifice of his own opin- 
ion. It can always be taken into the calculation, and 
counted at a certain figure, a higher figure being as- 
signed to the suffrages of those whose opinion is enti- 
tled to greater weight. There is not in this arrange- 
ment any thing necessarily invidious to those to whom 
it assigns the lower degrees of influence. Entire ex- 
clusion from a voice in the common concerns is one 
thing; the concession to others of a more potential 
voice, on the ground of greater capacity for the man- 
agement of the joint interests, is another. The two 
things are not merely different, they are incommen- 
surable. Every one has a right to feel insulted by 
being made a nobody, and stamped as of no account 
at all. Ko one but a fool, and only a fool of a pecul- 
iar description, feels offended by the acknowledgment 
that there are others whose opinion, and even whose 
wish, is entitled to a greater amount of consideration 
than his. To have no voice in what are partly his 
own concerns is a thing which nobody willingly sub- 
mits to ; but when what is partly his concern is also 
paj-tly another's, and he feels the other to understand 
the subject better than himself, that the other's opin- 
ion should be counted for more than his own ac- 
cords with his expectations, and with the course of 
things which in all other affairs of life he is accustom- 
ed to acquiesce in. It is only necessary that this su- 
perior influence should be assigned on grounds which 
he can comprehend, and of which he is able to pep 
ceive the justice. 



182 EXTENSION OF 

I hasten to say that I consider it entirely inadmissi- 
ble, unless as a temporary makeshift, that the superi- 
ority of influence should be conferred in consideration 
of property. I do not deny that property is a kind 
of test ; education, in most countries, though any thing 
but proportional to riches, is on the average better in 
the richer half of society than in the poorer. But the 
criterion is so imperfect ; accident has so much more 
to do than merit with enabling men to rise in the 
world ; and it is so impossible for any one, by acquir- 
ing any amount of instruction, to make sure of the 
corresponding rise in station, that this foundation of 
electoral privilege is always, and will continue to be, 
supremely odious. To connect plurality of votes with 
any pecuniary qualification would be not only objec- 
tionable in itself, but a sure mode of compromising 
the principle, and making its permanent maintenance 
impracticable. The democracy, at least of this coun- 
try, are not at present jealous of personal superiority, 
but they are naturally and most justly so of that which 
is grounded on mere pecuniary circumstances. The 
only thing which can justify reckoning one person's 
opinion as equivalent to more than one is individual 
mental superiority, and what is wanted is some ap- 
proximate means of ascertaining that. If there ex- 
isted such a thing as a really national education or a 
trustworthy system of general examination, education 
might be tested directly. In the absence of these, the 
nature of a person's occupation is some test. An em- 
ployer of labor is on the average more intelligent than 
a laborer; for he mi^st labor with his head, and not 



THE SUFFRAGE. 183 

solely with his hands. A foreman is generally more 
intelligent than an ordinary laborer, and a laborer in 
the skilled trades than in the unskilled. A banker, 
merchant, or manufacturer is likely to be more intel- 
ligent than a tradesman, because he has larger and 
more complicated interests to manage. In all these 
cases it is not the having merely undertaken the su- 
perior function, but the successful performance of it, 
that tests the qualifications ; for which reason, as well 
to prevent persons from engaging nominally in an oc- 
cupation for the sake of the vote, it would be proper 
to require that the occupation should have been per- 
severed in for some length of time (say three years). 
Subject to some such condition, two or more votes 
might be allowed to every person who exercises any 
of these superior functions. The liberal professions, 
when really and not nominally practiced, imply, of 
course, a still higher degree of instruction ; and when- 
ever a sufficient examination, or any serious condi- 
tions of education, are required before entering on a 
profession, its members could be admitted at once to a 
plurality of votes. The same rule might be applied 
to graduates of universities, and even to those who 
bring satisfactory certilicates of having passed through 
the course of study required by any school at which 
the higher branches of knowledge are taught, under 
proper securities that the teaching is real, and not a 
mere pretense. The " local" or " middle class" exam- 
inations for the degree of associate, so laudably and 
public-spiritedly established by the University of Ox- 
ford, and any similar ones which may be instituted by 



184 EXTENSION OF 

other competent bodies (provided they are fairly open 
to all comers), afford a ground on which plurality of 
votes might with great advantage be accorded to those 
who have passed the test. All these suggestions are 
open to much discussion in the detail, and to objections 
which it is of no use to anticipate. The time is not 
come for giving to such plans a practical shape, nor 
should I wish to be bound by the particular proposals 
which I have made. But it is to me evident that in 
this direction lies the true ideal of representative gov- 
ernment, and that to work toward it by the best prac- 
tical contrivances which can be found is the path of 
real political improvement. 

If it be asked to what length the principle admits 
of being carried, or how many votes might be accord- 
ed to an individual on the ground of superior qualifi- 
cations, I answer, that this is not in itself very mate- 
rial, provided the distinctions and gradations are not 
made arbitrarily, but are such as cail be understood 
and accepted by the general conscience and under- 
standing. But it is an absolute condition not to over- 
pass the limit prescribed by the fundamental principle 
laid down in a former chapter as the condition of ex- 
cellence in the constitution of a representative system. 
The plurality of votes must on no account be carried 
so far that those who are privileged by it, or the class 
(if any) to which they mainly belong, shall outweigh 
by means of it all the rest of the community. The 
distinction in favor of education, right in itself, is far- 
ther and strongly recommended by its preserving the 
educated from the class legislation of the uneducated; 



THE SUFFKAGE. 185 

but it must stop short of enabling them to practice 
class legislation on their own account. Let me add 
that I consider it an absolutely necessary part of the 
plurality scheme that it be open to the poorest indi- 
vidual in the community to claim its privileges, if he 
can prove that, in spite of all difficulties and obstacles, 
he is, in point of intelligence, entitled to them. There 
ought to be voluntary examinations at which any 
person whatever might present himself, might prove 
that he came up to the standard of knowledge and 
ability laid down as sufficient, and be admitted, in con- 
sequence, to the plurality of votes. A privilege which 
is not refused to any one who can show that he has 
realized the conditions on which in theory and prin- 
ciple it is dependent, would not be repugnant to any 
one's sentiment of justice; but it would certainly be 
so if, while conferred on general presumptions not al- 
ways infallible, it were denied to direct proof 

Plural voting, though practiced in vestry elections 
and those of poor-law guardians, is so unfamiliar in 
elections to Parliament that it is not likely to be soon 
or willingly adopted ; but as the time will certainly 
arrive when the only choice will be between this and 
equal universal suffrage, whoever does not desire the 
last can not too soon begin to reconcile himself to the 
former. In the mean time, though the suggestion, for 
the present, may not be a practical one, it will serve 
to mark what is best in principle, and enable us to 
judge of the eligibility of any indirect means, either 
existing or capable of being adopted, which may pro- 
mote in a less perfect manner the same end. A per- 



186 



EXTENSION OF 



son may have a double vote by other means than that 
of tendering two votes at the same hustings ; he may 
have a vote in each of two different constituencies ; 
and though this exceptional privilege at present be- 
longs rather to superiority of means than of intelli- 
gence, I would not abolish it where it exists, since, un- 
til a truer test of education is adopted, it would be 
unwise to dispense with even so imperfect a one as is 
afforded by pecuniary circumstances. Means might 
be found of giving a farther extension to the privi- 
lege, which would connect it in a more direct manner 
with superior education. In any future Eeform Bill 
which lowers greatly the pecuniary conditions of the 
suffrage, it might be a wise provision to allow all grad- 
uates of universities, all persons who had passed cred- 
itably through the higher schools, all members of the 
liberal professions, and perhaps some others, to be reg- 
istered specifically in those characters, and to give 
their votes as such in any constituency in which they 
chose to register; retaining, in addition, their votes as 
simple citizens in the localities in which they reside. 

Until there shall have been devised, and until opin- 
ion is willing to accept, some mode of plural voting 
which may assign to education as such the degree of 
superior influence due to it, and sufficient as a coun- 
terpoise to the numerical weight of the least educated 
class, for so long the benefits of completely universal 
suffrage can not be obtained without bringing with 
them, as it appears to me, more than equivalent evils. 
It is possible, indeed (and this is perhaps one of the 
transitions through which we may have to pass in our 



THE SUFFRAGE. 187 

progress to a really good representative system), that 
the barriers which restrict the suffrage might be en- 
tirely leveled in some particular constituencies, whose 
members, consequently, would be returned principally 
by manual laborers; the existing electoral qualifica- 
tion being maintained elsewhere, or any alteration in 
it being accompanied by such a grouping of the con- 
stituencies as to prevent the laboring class from be- 
coming preponderant in Parliament. By such a com- 
promise, the anomalies in the representation would not 
only be retained, but augmented ; this, however, is not 
a conclusive objection ; for if the country does not 
choose to pursue the right ends by a regular system 
directly leading to them, it must be content with an 
irregular makeshift, as being greatly preferable to a 
system free from irregularities, but regularly adapted 
to wrong ends, or in which some ends equally neces- 
sary with the others have been left out. It is a far 
graver objection that this adjustment is incompatible 
with the intercommunity of local constituencies which 
Mr. Hare's plan requires ; that under it every voter 
would remain imprisoned within the one or more con- 
stituencies in which his name is registered, and, unless 
willing to be represented by one of the candidates for 
those localities, would not be represented at all. 

So much importance do I attach to the emancipa- 
tion of those who already have votes, but whose votes 
are useless, because always outnumbered — so much 
should I hope from the natural influence of truth and 
reason, if only secured a hearing and a competent 
advocacy, that I should not despair of the operation 



188 EXTENSION OF 

even of equal and universal suffrage, if made real by 
the proportional representation of all minorities, on 
Mr. Hare's principle. But if the best hopes which can 
be formed on this subject were certainties, I should 
still contend for the principle of plural voting. I do 
not propose the plurality as a thing in itself unde- 
sirable, which, like the exclusion of part of the com- 
munity from the suffrage, may be temporarily toler- 
ated while necessary to prevent gre,ater evils. I do 
not look upon equal voting as among the things which 
are good in themselves, provided they can be guarded 
against inconveniences. I look upon it as only rela- 
tively good; less objectionable than inequality of 
privilege grounded on irrelevant or adventitious cir- 
cumstances, but in principle wrong, because recogniz- 
ing a wrong standard, and exercising a bad influence 
on the voter's mind. It is not useful, but hurtful, that 
the constitution of the country should declare igno- 
rance to be entitled to as much political power as 
knowledge. The national institutions should place 
all things that they are concerned with before the 
mind of the citizen in the light in which it is for his 
good that he should regard them ; and as it for his 
good that he should think that every one is entitled 
to some influence, but the better and wiser to more 
than others, it is important that this conviction should 
be professed by the state, and embodied in the nation- 
al institutions. Such things constitute the spirit of 
the institutions of a country ; that portion of their in- 
fluence which is least regarded by common, and espe- 
cially by English thinkers, though the institutions of 



THE SUFFRAGE. 189 

every country, not under great positive oppression, 
produce more effect by their spirit than by any of 
their direct provisions, since by it they shape the 
national character. The American institutions have 
imprinted strongly on the American mind that any 
one man (with a white skin) is as good as any other, 
and it is felt that this false creed is nearly connected 
with some of the more unfavorable points in Ameri- 
can, character. It is not a small mischief that the con- 
stitution of any country should sanction this creed; 
for the belief in it, whether express or tacit, is almost 
as detrimental to moral and intellectual excellence 
as any effect which most forms of government can 
produce. 

It may, perhaps, be said that a constitution which 
gives equal influence, man for man, to the most and 
to the least instructed, is nevertheless conducive to 
progress, because the appeals constantly made to the 
less instructed classes, the exercise given to their men- 
tal powers, and the exertions which the more instruct- 
ed are obliged to make for enlightening their judg- 
ment and ridding them of errors and prejudices, are 
powerful stimulants to their advance in intelligence. 
That this most desirable effect really attends the ad- 
mission of the less educated classes to some, and even 
to a large share of power, I admit, and have already 
strenuously maintained. But theory and experience 
alike prove that a counter current sets in when they 
are made the possessors of all power. Those who are 
supreme over every thing, whether they be One, or 
Few, or Man}'-, have no longer need of the arms of 



190 EXTENSION OF 

reason ; they can make their mere will prevail ; and 
those who can not be resisted are usually far too well 
satisfied with their own opinions to be willing to 
change them, or listen without impatience to any one 
who tells them that they are in the wrong. .The po- 
sition which gives the strongest stimulus to the growth 
of intelligence is that of rising into power, not that 
of having achieved it ; and of all resting-points, tem- 
porary or permanent, in the way to ascendency, the 
one which develops the best and highest qualities is 
the position of those who are strong enough to make 
reason prevail, but not strong enough to prevail against 
reason. This is the position in which, according to 
the principles we have laid down, the rich and the 
poor, the much and the little educated, and all the 
other classes and denominations which divide society 
between them, ought as far as practicable to be placed ; 
and by combining this principle with the otherwise 
just one of allowing superiority of weight to superi- 
ority of mental qualities, a political constitution would 
realize that kind of relative perfection which is alone 
compatible with the complicated nature of human 
affairs. 

In the preceding argument for universal but gradu- 
ated suffrage, I have taken no account of difference 
of sex. I consider it to be as entirely irrelevant to 
political rights as difference in height, or in the color 
of the hair. All human beings have the same in- 
terest in good government ; the welfare of all is alike 
affected by it, and they have equal need of a voice in 



THE SUFFRAGE. 191 

it to secure their share of its benefits. If there be any 
difference, women require it more than men, since, be- 
ing physically weaker, they are more dependent on 
law and society for protection. Mankind have long 
since abandoned the only premises which will support 
the conclusion that women ought not to have votes. 
No one now holds that women should be in personal 
servitude ; that they should have no thought, wish, 
or occupation but to be the domestic drudges of hus- 
bands, fathers, or brothers. It is allowed to unmar- 
ried, and wants but little of being conceded to mar- 
ried women to hold property, and have pecuniary and 
business interests in the sam.e manner as men. It is 
considered suitable and proper that women should 
think, and write, and be teachers. As soon as these 
things are admitted, the political disqualification has 
no principle to rest on. The whole mode of thought 
of the modern world is, with increasing emphasis, pro- 
nouncing against the claim of society to decide for in- 
dividuals what they are and are not fit for, and what 
they shall and shall not be allowed to attempt. If 
the principles of modern politics and political econo- 
my are good for any thing, it is for proving that these 
points can only be rightly judged of by the individ- 
uals themselves ; and that, under complete freedom of 
choice, wherever there are real diversities of aptitude, 
the greater number will apply themselv^es to the things 
for which they are on the average fittest, and the ex- 
ceptional course will only be taken by the exceptions. 
Either the whole tendency of modern social improve- 
ments has been wrong, or it ought to be carried out 



192 EXTENSION OF 

to the total abolition of all exclusions and disabilities 
which close any honest employment to a human being. 
But it is not even necessary to maintain so much 
in order to prove that women should have the suf- 
frage. Were it as right as it is wrong that they should 
be a subordinate class, confined to domestic occupa- 
tions and subject to domestic authority, they would 
not the less require the protection of the suffrage to 
secure them from the abuse of that authority. Men, 
us well as women, do not need political rights in order 
that they may govern, but in order that they may not 
be misgoverned. The majority of the male sex are, 
and will be all their lives, nothing else than laborers 
in corn-fields or manufactories ; but this does not ren- 
der the suffrage less desirable for them, nor their claim 
to it less irresistible, when not likely to make a bad 
use of it. Nobody pretends to think that women 
would make a bad use of the suffrage. The worst 
that is said is that they would vote as mere depend- 
ents, at the bidding of their male relations. If it be 
so, so let it be. If they think for themselves, great 
good will be done ; and if they do not, no harm. It 
is a benefit to human beings to take off their fetters, 
even if they do not desire to walk. It would already 
be a great improvement in the moral position of wom- 
en to be no longer declared by law incapable of an 
opinion, and not entitled to a preference respecting 
the most important concerns of humanity. There 
would be some benefit to them individually in hav- 
ing something to bestow which their male relatives 
can not exact, and are yet desirous to have. It would 



THE SUFFEAGE. 193 

also be no small matter that the husband would nec- 
essarily discuss the matter with his wife, and that the 
vote would not be his exclusive affair, but a joint con- 
cern. People do not sufficiently consider how mark- 
edly the fact that she is able to have some action on 
the outward world independently of him, raises her 
dignity and value in a vulgar man's eyes, and makes 
her the object of a respect which no personal quali- 
ties would ever obtain for one whose social existence 
he can entirely appropriate. The vote itself, too, 
would be improved in quality. The man would often 
be obliged to find honest reasons for his vote, such as 
might induce a more upright and impartial character 
to serve with him under the same banner. The wife's 
influence would often keep him true to his own sin- 
cere opinion. Often, indeed, it would be used, not on 
the side of public principle, but of the personal inter- 
est or worldly vanity of the family. But, wherever 
this would be the tendency of the wife's influence, it 
is exerted to the full already in that bad direction, 
and with the more certainty, since under the present 
law and custom she is generally too utter a stranger 
to politics in any sense in which they involve princi- 
ple to be able to realize to herself that there is a point 
of honor in them ; and most people have as little sym- 
pathy in the point of honor of others, when their own 
is not placed in the same thing, as they have in the 
religious feelings of those whose religion differs from 
theirs. Give the woman a vote, and she comes under 
the operation of the political point of honor. She 
learns to look on politics as a thing on which she is 

I 



194 EXTENSION OF 

allowed to have an opinion, and in which, if one has 
an opinion, it ought to be acted upon ; she acquires a 
sense of personal accountability in the matter, and 
will no longer feel, as she does at present, that what- 
ever amount of bad influence she may exercise, if the 
man can but be persuaded, all is right, and his respon- 
sibility covers all. It is only by being herself en- 
couraged to form an opinion, and obtain an intelligent 
comprehension of the reasons which ought to prevail 
with the conscience against the temptations of person- 
al or family interest, that she can ever cease to act 
as a disturbing force on the political conscience of 
the man. Her indirect agency can only be prevented 
from being politically mischievous by being exchanged 
for direct. 

I have supposed the right of suffrage to depend, as 
in a good state of things it would, on personal condi- 
tions. Where it depends, as in this and most other 
countries, on conditions of property, the contradiction 
is even more flagrant. There is something more than 
ordinarily irrational in the fact that when .a woman 
can give all the guarantees required from a male elect- 
or, independent circumstances, the position of a house- 
holder and head of a family, payment of taxes, or 
whatever may be the conditions imposed, the very 
principle and system of a representation based on 
property is set aside, and an exceptionally personal 
disqualification is created for the mere purpose of ex- 
cluding her. When it is added that in the country 
where this is done a woman now reigns, and that the 
most glorious ruler whom that country ever had was 



THE SUFFRAGE. 195 

a woman, the picture of unreason and scarcely dis- 
guised injustice is complete. Let us hope that as the 
work proceeds of pulling down, one after another, the 
remains of the mouldering fabric of monopoly and 
tyranny, this one will not be the last to disappear; 
that the opinion of Bentham, of Mr. Samuel Bailey, 
of Mr. Hare, and many other of the most powerful 
political thinkers of this age and country (not to speak 
of others), will make its way to all minds not render- 
ed obdurate by selfishness or inveterate prejudice; 
and that, before the lapse of another generation, the 
accident of sex, no more than the accident of skin, 
will be deemed a sufficient justification for depriving 
its possessor of the equal protection and just privi- 
leges of a citizen. 



196 TWO STAGES OF ELECTION. 



CHAPTER IX. 

SHOULD THERE BE TWO STAGES OF ELECTION? 

In some representative constitutions, the plan has 
been adopted of choosing the members of the repre- 
sentative body by a double process, the primary elect- 
ors only choosing other electors, and these electing 
the member of Parliament. This contrivance was 
probably intended as a slight impediment to the full 
sweep of popular feeling, giving the suffrage, and with 
it the complete ultimate power, to the Many, but com- 
pelling them to exercise it through the agency of a 
comparatively few, who, it was supposed, would be 
less moved than the Demos by the gusts of popular 
passion ; and as the electors, being already a select 
body, might be expected to exceed in intellect and 
character the common level of their constituents, the 
choice made by them was thought likely to be more 
careful and enlightened, and would, in any case, be 
made under a greater feeling of responsibility than 
election by the masses themselves. This plan of fil- 
tering, as it were, the popular suffrage through an in- 
termediate body, admits of a very plausible defense ; 
since it may be said, with great appearance of reason, 
that less intellect and instruction are required forjudg- 
ing who among our neighbors can be most safely 
trusted to choose a member of Parliament than who 
is himself fittest to be one. 



TWO STAGES OF ELECTION. 197 

In the first place, however, if the dangers incident 
to popular power may be thought to be in some de- 
gree lessened by this indirect management, so also are 
its benefits ; and the latter effect is much more certain 
than the former. To enable the system to work as 
desired, it must be carried into effect in the spirit in 
which it is planned ; the electors must use the suffrage 
in the manner supposed by the theory, that is, each 
of them must not ask himself who the member of Par- 
liament should be, but only whom he would best like 
to choose one for him. It is evident that the advan- 
tages which indirect is supposed to have over direct 
election require this disposition of mind in the voter, 
and will only be realized by his taking the doctrine 
au serieux^ that his sole business is to choose the choos- 
ers, not the member himself. The supposition must 
be, that he will not occupy his thoughts with polit- 
ical opinions and measures or political men, but will 
be guided by his personal respect for some private 
individual, to whom he will give a general power of 
attorney to act for him. Now if the primary electors 
adopt this view of their position, one of the principal 
uses of giving them a vote at all is defeated ; the po- 
litical function to which they are called fails of devel- 
oping public spirit and political intelligence, of ma- 
king public affairs an object of interest to their feel- 
ings and of exercise to their faculties. The supposi- 
tion, moreover, involves inconsistent conditions ; for 
if the voter feels no interest in the final result, how or 
why can he be expected to feel any in the process 
which leads to it? To wish to have a particular in- 



198 TWO STAGES OF ELECTION. 

dividual for his representative in Parliament is possi- 
ble to a person of a very moderate degree of virtue 
and intelligence, and to wish to choose an elector who 
will elect that individual is a natural consequence ; 
but for a person who does not care who is elected, or 
feels bound to put that consideration in abeyance, to 
take any interest whatever in merely naming the 
worthiest person to elect another according to his own 
judgment, implies a zeal for what is right in the ab- 
stract, an habitual principle of duty for the sake of 
duty, which is possible only to persons of a rather 
high grade of cultivation, who, by the very possession 
of it, show that they may be, and deserve to be, trust- 
ed with political power in a more direct shape. Of 
all public functions which it is possible to confer on 
the poorer members of the community, this surely is 
the least calculated to kindle their feelings, and holds 
out least natural inducement to care for it other than 
a virtuous determination to discharge conscientiously 
whatever duty one has to perform ; and if the mass 
of electors cared enough about political affairs to set 
any value on so limited a participation in them, they 
would not be likely to be satisfied without one much 
more extensive. 

In the next place, admitting that a person who, 
from his narrow range of cultivation, can not judge 
well of the qualifications of a candidate for Parlia- 
ment, may be a sufiicient judge of the honesty and 
general capacity of somebody whom he may depute 
to choose a member of Parliament for him, I may re- 
mark, that if the voter acquiesces in this estimate of 



TWO STAGES OF ELECTION. 199 

his capabilities, and really wishes to have the choice 
made for him by a person in whom he places reliance, 
there is no need of any constitutional provision for 
the purpose ; he has only to ask this confidential per- 
son piivately what candidate he had better vote for. 
In that case the two modes of election coincide in 
their result, and every advantage of indirect election 
is obtained under direct. The systems only diverge 
in their operation if we suppose that the voter would 
prefer to use his own judgment in the choice of a 
representative, and only lets another choose for him 
because the law does not allow him a more direct 
mode of action. But if this be his state of mind ; if 
his will does not go along with the limitation which 
the law imposes, and he desires to make a direct 
choice, he can do so notwithstanding the law. He 
has only to choose as elector a known partisan of the 
candidate he prefers, or some one who will pledge 
himself to vote for that candidate. And this is so 
much the natural working of election by two stages, 
that, except in a condition of complete political indif- 
ference, it can scarcely be expected to act otherwise. 
It is in this way that the election of the President of 
the United States practically operates. Nominally 
the election is indirect ; the population at large does 
not vote for the President ; it votes for electors who 
choose the President. But the electors . are always 
chosen under an express engagement to vote for a 
particular candidate ; nor does a citizen ever vote for 
an elector iDccause of any preference for the man ; he 
votes for the Breckinridge ticket or the Lincoln tick- 



200 TWO STAGES OF ELECTION. 

et. It must be remembered tliat tlie electors are not 
chosen in order that they may search the country and 
find the fittest person in it to be President or to be a 
member of Parliament. There would be something 
to be said for the practice if this were so ; but it is 
not so, nor ever will be, until mankind in general 
are of opinion, with Plato, that the proper person to 
be intrusted with power is the person most unwilling 
to accept it. The electors are to make choice of one 
of those who have offered themselves as candidates, 
and those who choose the electors already know who 
these are. If there is any political activity in the 
country, all electors who care to vote at all have made 
up their minds which of these candidates they would 
like to have, and will make that the sole considera- 
tion in giving their vote. The partisans of each can- 
didate will have their list of electors ready, all pledged 
to vote for that individual ; and the only question 
practically asked of the primary elector will be, which 
of these lists he will support. 

The case in which election by two stages answers 
well in practice is when the electors are not chosen 
solely as electors, but have other important functions 
to discharge, which precludes their being selected 
solely as delegates to give a particular vote. This 
combination of circumstances exemplifies itself in an- 
other American institution, the Senate of the United 
States. That assembly, the Upper House, as it were, 
of Congress, is considered to represent, not the people 
directly, but the states as such, and to be the guard- 
ian of that portion of their sovereign rights which 



TWO STAGES OF ELECTION. 201 

they have not alienated. As the internal sovereignty 
of each state is, by the nature of an equal federation, 
equally sacred whatever be the size or importance of 
the state, each returns to the Senate the same number 
of members (two), whether it be little Delaware or the 
"Empire State" of New York. These members are 
not chosen by the population, but by the State Legis- 
latures, themselves elected by the people of each state ; 
but as the whole ordinary business of a legislative 
assembly, internal legislation and the control of the 
executive, devolves upon these bodies, they are elect- 
ed with a view to those objects more than to the oth- 
er ; and in naming two persons to represent the state 
in the federal Senate, they for the most part exercise 
their own judgment, with only that general refer,ence 
to public opinion necessary in all acts of the govern- 
ment of a democracy. The elections thus made have 
proved eminently successful, and are conspicuously 
the best of all the elections in the United States, the 
Senate invariably consisting of the most distinguished 
men among those who have made themselves sufii- 
ciently known in public life. After such an exam- 
ple, it can not be said that indirect popular election 
is never advantageous. Under certain conditions, it 
is the very best system that can be adopted. But 
those conditions are hardly to be obtained in practice 
except in a federal government like that of the United 
States, where the election can be intrusted to local 
bodies whose other functions extend to the most im- 
portant concerns of the nation. The only bodies in 
anv analogous position which exist, or are likely to 

12 



202 TWO STAGES OF ELECTIOI>r. 

exist, in this country, are the municipalities, or any 
other boards which liave been or may be created for 
similar local purposes. Few persons, however, would 
think it any improvement in our Parliamentary con- 
stitution if the members for the City of London were 
chosen by the aldermen and Common Council, and 
those for the borough of Marylebone avowedly, as 
they already are virtually, by the vestries of the com- 
ponent parishes. Even if those bodies, considered 
merely as local boards, were far less objectionable 
than they are, the qualities that would fit them for 
the limited and peculiar duties of municipal or pa- 
rochial asdileship are no guaranty of any special fit- 
ness to judge of the comparative qualifications of can- 
didates for a seat in Parliament. They probably 
would not fulfill this duty any better than it is fulfill- 
ed by the inhabitants voting directly ; while, on the 
other hand, if fitness for electing members of Parlia- 
ment ^had to be taken into consideration in selecting 
persons for the office of vestrymen or town council- 
ors, many of those who are fittest for that more limit- 
ed duty would inevitably be excluded from it, if only 
by the necessity there would be of choosing persons 
whose sentiments in general politics agreed with those 
of the voters who elected them. The mere indirect 
political influence of town councils has already led to 
a considerable perversion of municipal elections from 
their intended purpose by making them a matter of 
party politics. If it were part of the duty of a man's 
book-keeper or steward to choose his physician, he 
would not be likely to have a better medical attend- 



TWO STAGES OF ELECTION. 203 

ant than if lie cliose one for himself, while he would 
be restricted in his choice of a steward or book-keep- 
er to such as might, without too great danger to his 
health, be intrusted with the other office. 

It appears, therefore, that every benefit of indirect 
election which is attainable at all is attainable under 
direct ; that such of the benefits expected from it as 
would not be obtained under direct election will just 
as much fail to be obtained under indirect ; while the 
latter has considerable disadvantages peculiar to itself 
The mere fact that it is an additional and superfluous 
wheel in the machinery is no trifling objection. Its 
decided inferiorit}^ as a means of cultivating public 
spirit and political intelligence has already been dwelt 
upon ; and if it had any effective operation at all — 
that is, if the primary electors did to any extent leave 
to their nominees the selection of their Parliamentary 
representative, the voter would be prevented from 
identifying himself with his member of Parliament, 
and the member would feel a much less active sense 
of responsibility to his constituents. In addition to 
all this, the comparatively small number of persons in 
whose hands, at last, the election of a member of Par- 
liament would reside, could not but afford great addi- 
tional facilities to intrigue, and to every form of corrup- 
tion compatible with the station in life of the electors. 
The constituencies would universally be reduced, in 
point of conveniences for bribery, to the condition of 
the small boroughs at present. It would be sufficient 
to gain over a small number of persons to be certain 
of being returned. If it be said that the electors would 
be responsible to those who elected them, the answer 



204 TWO STAGES OF ELECTION. 

is obvious, that, holding no permanent office or posi- 
tion in the public eye, they would risk nothing by a 
corrupt vote except what they would care little for, 
not to be appointed electors again ; and the main re- 
liance must still be on the penalties for bribery, the 
insufficiency of which reliance, in small constituencies, 
experience has made notorious to all the world. The 
evil would be exactly proportional to the amount of 
discretion left to the chosen electors. The only case 
in which they would probably be afraid to employ 
their vote for the promotion of their personal interest 
would be when they were elected under an express 
pledge, as mere delegates, to carry, as it were, the votes 
of their constituents to the hustings. The moment 
the double stage of election began to have ,any effect, 
it would begin to have a bad effect. And this we 
shall find true of the principle of indirect election how- 
ever applied, except in circumstances similar to those 
of the election of senators in the United States. 

It is unnecessary, as far as England is concerned, 
to say more in opposition to a scheme which has no 
foundation in any of the national traditions. An apol- 
ogy may even be expected for saying so much against 
a political expedient which perhaps could not, in this 
country, muster a single adherent. But a conception 
so plausible at the first glance, and for which there are 
so many precedents in history, might perhaps, in the 
general chaos of political opinions, rise again to the 
surface, and be brought forward on occasions when it 
might be seductive to some minds ; and it could not, 
therefore, even if English readers were alone to be 
considered, be passed altogether in silence. 



MODE OF VOTING. 205 



CHAPTER X. 

OF THE MODE OF VOTING. 

The question of greatest moment in regard to modes 
of voting is that of secrecy or publicity, and to this we 
will at once address ourselves. 

It would be a great mistake to make the discussion 
turn on sentimentalities about skulking or cowardice. 
Secrecy is justifiable in many cases, imperative in 
some, and it is not cowardice to seek protection against 
evils which are honestly avoidable. Nor can it be 
reasonably maintained that no cases are conceivable 
in which secret voting is preferable to public ; but I 
must contend that these cases, in affairs of a political 
character, are the exception, not the rule. 

The present is one of the many instances in which, 
as I have already had occasion to remark, the spirit of 
an institution, the impression it makes on the mind of 
the citizen, is one of the most important parts of its 
operation. The spirit of vote by ballot — the inter- 
pretation likely to be put on it in the mind of an 
elector, is that the suffrage is given to him for him- 
self^ — for his particular use and benefit, and not as a 
trust for the public. For if it is indeed a trust, if the 
public are entitled to his vote, are not they entitled to 
know his vote ? This false and pernicious impression 
may well be made on the generality, since it has been 



206 MODE OF VOTING. 

made on most of those who of late years have been 
conspicuous advocates of the ballot. The doctrine was 
not so understood by its earlier promoters ; but the 
effect of a doctrine on the mind is best shown, not in 
those who form it, but in those who are formed by it. 
Mr. Bright and his school of democrats think them- 
selves greatly concerned in maintaining that the fran- 
chise is what they term a right, not a trust. ISTow 
this one idea, taking root in the general mind, does a 
moral mischief outweighing all the good that the bal- 
lot could do, at the highest possible estimate of it. 
In whatever way we define or understand the idea of 
a right, no person can have a right (except in the legal 
sense) to power over others: every such power which 
he is allowed to possess is morally, in the fullest force 
of the term, a trust. But the exercise of any political 
function, either as an elector or as a representative, is 
power over others. Those who say that the suffrage 
is not a trust, but a right, can scarcely have considered 
the consequences to which their doctrine leads. If it 
is a right, if it belongs to the voter for his own sake, 
on what ground can we blame him for selling it, or 
using it to recommend himself to any one whom it is 
his interest to please ? A person is not expected to 
consult exclusively the public benefit in the use he 
makes of his house, or his three per cent, stock, or any 
thing to which he really has a right. The suffrage is 
indeed due to him, among other reasons, as a means 
to his own protection, but only against treatment from 
which he is equally bound, so far as depends on his 
vote, to protect every one of his fellow-citizens. His 



MODE OF VOTING. 207 

vote is not a thing in which he has an option ; it has 
no more to do with his personal wishes than the ver- 
dict of a juryman. It is strictly a matter of duty ; he 
is bound to give it accordingly to his best and most 
conscientious opinion of the public good. Whoever 
has any other idea of it is unfit to have the suffrage ; 
its effect on him is to pervert, not to elevate his mind. 
Instead of opening his heart to an exalted patriotism 
and the obligation of public duty, it awakens and 
nourishes in him the disposition to use a public func- 
tion for his own interest, pleasure, or caprice ; the 
same feelings and purposes, on a humbler scale, which 
actuate a despot and an oppressor. Now an ordinary 
citizen in any public position, or on whom there de- 
volves any social function, is certain to think and feel, 
respecting the obligations it imposes on him, exactly 
what society appears to think and feel in conferring 
it. What seems to be expected from him by society 
forms a standard which he may fall below, but which 
he certainly will not rise above. And the interpret- 
ation which he is almost sure to put upon secret 
voting is that he is not bound to give his vote with 
any reference to those who are not allowed to know 
how he gives it, but may bestow it simply as he feels 
inclined. 

This is the decisive reason why the argument does 
not hold, from the nse of the ballot in clubs and pri- 
vate societies to its adoption in Parliamentary elec- 
tions. A member of a club is really, what the elector 
falsely believes himself to be, under no obligation to 
consider the wishes or interests of any one else. He 



208 MODE OF VOTING. 

declares nothing by his vote but that he is or is not 
willing to associate, in a manner more or less close, 
with a particular person. This is a matter on which, 
by universal admission, his own pleasure or inclina- 
tion is entitled to decide ; and that he should be able 
so to decide it without risking a quarrel is best for 
every body, the rejected person included. An addi- 
tional reason rendering the ballot unobjectionable in 
these cases is that it does not necessarily or naturally 
lead to lying. The persons concerned are of the same 
class or rank, and it would be considered improper in 
one of them to press the other with questions as to 
how he had voted. It is far otherwise in Parliament- 
ary elections, and is likely to remain so as long as the 
social relations exist which produce the demand for 
the ballot — as long as one person is sufficiently the 
superior of another to think himself entitled to dic- 
tate his vote. And while this is the case, silence or 
an evasive answer is certain to be construed as proof 
that the vote given has not been that which was de- 
sired. 

In any political election, even by universal suffrage 
(and still more obviously in the case of a restricted 
suffrage), the voter is under an absolute moral obli- 
gation to consider the interest of the public, not his 
private advantage, and give his vote, to the best of 
his judgment, exactly as he would be bound to do 
if he were the sole voter, and the election depended 
upon him alone. This being admitted, it is at least a 
prima facie consequence that the duty of voting, like 
any other public duty, should be performed under the 



MODE OF VOTING. 209 

eve and criticism of tlie public ; every one of whom 
has not only an interest in its performance, but a good 
title to consider himself wronged if it is performed 
otherwise than honestly and carefully. Undoubtedly 
neither this nor any other maxim of political morality 
is absolutely inviolable ; il may be overruled by still 
more cogent considerations; but its weight is such 
that the cases which admit of a departure from it must 
be of a strikingly exceptional character. 

It may unquestionably be the fact, that if we at- 
tempt, by publicity, to make the voter responsible to 
the public for his vote, he will practically be made 
responsible for it to some powerful individual, whose 
interest is more opposed to the general interest of the 
community than that of the voter himself would be, 
if, by the shield of secrecy, he were released from re- 
sponsibility altogether. When this is the condition, 
in a high degree, of a large proportion uf the voters, 
the ballot may be the smaller evil. 'When the voters 
are slaves, any thing may be tolerated which enables 
them to throw off the yoke. The strongest case for 
the ballot is when the mischievous power of the Few 
over the Many is increasing. In the decline of the 
Eoman republic, the reasons for the ballot were irre- 
sistible. The oligarchy was yearly becoming richer 
and more tyrannical, the people poorer and more de- 
pendent, and it was necessary to erect stronger and 
stronger barriers against such abuse of the franchise 
as rendered it but an instrument the more in the hands 
of unprincipled persons of consequence. As little can 
it be doubted that the ballot, so far as it existed, had 



210 MODE OF VOTING. 

a beneficial operation in the Athenian constitution. 
Even in the least unstable of the Grecian common^ 
wealths, freedom might be for the time destroyed by 
a single unfairly obtained popular vote ; and though 
the Athenian voter was not sufficiently dependent to 
be habitually coerced, he might have been bribed or 
intimidated by the lawless outrages of some knot of 
individuals, such as were not uncommon even at 
Athens among the youth of rank and fortune. The 
ballot was in these cases a valuable instrument of or- 
der, and conduced to the Eunomia by which Athens 
was distinguished among tbe ancient commonwealths. 

But in the more advanced states of modern Europe, 
and especially in this country, the power of coercing 
voters has declined and is declining; and bad voting 
is now less to be apprehended from the influences to 
which the voter is subject at the hands of others, than 
from the sinister interests and discreditable feelings 
which belong to himself, either individually or as a 
member of a class. To secure him against the first, 
at the cost of removing all restraint from the last, 
would be to exchange a smaller and a diminishing 
evil for a greater and increasing one. On this topic, 
and on the question generally as applicable to En- 
gland at the present date, I have, in a pamphlet on 
Parliamentary Reform, expressed myself in terms 
which, as I do not feel that I can improve upon, I will 
venture here to transcribe. 

" Thirty years ago, it was still true that in the elec- 
tion of members of Parliament the main evil to be 
guarded against was that whicli the ballot would ex- 



MODE OF VOTING. 211 

elude — coercion by landlords, employers, and custom- 
ers. At present, I conceive, a much greater source of 
evil is the selfishness, or the selfish partialities of the 
voter himself A base and mischievous vote is now, 
I am convinced, much oftener given from the voter's 
personal interest, or class interest, or some mean feel- 
ing in his own mind, than from any fear of conse- 
quences at the hands of others ; and to these influences 
the ballot would enable him to yield himself up, free 
from all sense of shame or responsibility. 

"In times not long gone by, the higher and richer 
classes were in complete possession of the government. 
Their power was the master grievance of the country. 
The habit of voting at the bidding of an employer or 
of a landlord was so firmly established that hardly 
any thing was capable of shaking it but a strong pop- 
ular enthusiasm, seldom known to exist but in a good 
cause. A vote given in opposition to these influences 
was therefore, in general, an honest, a public-spirited 
vote ; but in any case, and by whatever motive dic- 
tated, it was almost sure to be a good vote, for it was 
a vote against the monster evil, the overruling influ- 
ence of oligarchy. Could the voter at that time have 
been enabled, with safety to himself, to exercise his 
privilege freely, even though neither honestly nor in- 
telligently, it would have been a great gain to reform, 
for it would have broken the yoke of the then ruling 
power in the country — the power which had created 
and which maintained all that was bad in the institu- 
tions and administration of the state — the power of 
landlords and boroughmougers. 



212 MODE OF VOTING. 

# 

" The ballot was not adopted ; but the progress of 
circumstances has done and is doing more and more, 
in this respect, the work of the ballot. Both the po- 
litical and the social state of the country, as they affect 
this question, have greatly changed, and are changing 
every day. The higher classes are not now masters 
of the countr}^ A person must be blind to all the 
signs of the times who could think that the middle 
classes are as subservient to the higher, or the work- 
ing classes as dependent on the higher and middle, as 
they were a quarter of a century ago. The events of 
that quarter of a century have not only taught each 
class to know its own collective strength, but have put 
the individuals of a lower class in a condition to show 
a much bolder front to those of a higher. In a ma- 
jority of cases, the vote of the electors, whether in op- 
position to or in accordance with the wishes of their 
superiors, is not now the effect of coercion, which there 
are no longer the same means of applying, but the ex- 
pression of their own personal or political partialities. 
The very vices of the present electoral system are a 
proof of this. The growth of bribery, so loudly com- 
plained of, and the spread of the contagion to places 
formerly free from it, are evidence that the local in- 
fluences are no longer paramount; that the electors 
now vote to please themselves, and not other people. 
There is, no doubt, in counties and in the smaller bor- 
oughs, a large amount of servile dependence still re- 
maining ; but the temper of the times is adverse to it, 
and the force of events is constantly tending to dimin- 
ish it. A good tenant can now feel that he is as val- 



MODE OF VOTING. 213 

liable to his landlord as his landlord is to liim ; a 
prosperous tradesman can afford to feel independent of 
any particular customer. At every election the votes 
are more and more the voter's own. It is their mindsj 
far more than their personal circumstances, that now 
require to be emancipated. They are no longer pass- 
ive instruments of other men's will — mere organs for 
putting power into the hands of a controlling oligarchy. 
The electors themselves are becoming the oligarchy. 

" Exactly in proportion as the vote of the elector is 
determined by his own will, and not by that of some- 
body who is his master, his position is similar to that 
of a member of Parliament, and publicity is indispen- 
sable. So long as any portion of the community are 
unrepresented, the argument of the Chartists against 
ballot in conjunction with a restricted suffrage is un- 
assailable. The present electors, and the bulk of those 
whom any probable Reform Bill would add to the 
number, are the middle class, and have as much a 
class interest, distinct from the working classes, as 
landlords or great manufacturers. Were the suffrage 
extended to all skilled laborers, even these would, or 
might, still have a class interest distinct from the un- 
skilled. Suppose it extended to all men — suppose 
that what was formerly called by the misapplied name 
of universal suffrage, and now by the silly title of man- 
hood suffrage, became the law ; the voters would still 
have a class interest as distinguished from women. 
Suppose that there were a question before the Legis- 
lature specially affecting women — as whether women 
should be allowed to graduate at universities ; wheth- 



214 MODE OF VOTING. 

er the mild penalties inflicted on ruffians who beat 
their wives daily almost to death's door should be ex- 
changed for something more effectual ; or suppose that 
any one should propose in the British Parliament what 
one state after another in America is enacting, not by 
a mere law, but by a provision of their revised Con- 
stitutions, that married women should have a right to 
their own property — are not a man's wife and daugh- 
ters entitled to know whether he votes for or against 
a candidate who will support these propositions? 

" It will of course be objected that these arguments 
derive all their weight from the supposition of an un- 
just state of the suffrage: that if the opinion of the 
non-electors is likely to make the elector vote more 
honestly or more beneficially than he would vote if 
left to himself, they are more fit to be electors than he 
is, and ought to have the franchise; that whoever is 
fit to influence electors is fit to be an elector; that 
those to whom voters ought to be responsible should 
be themselves voters, and, being such, should have the 
safeguard of the ballot, to shield them from the undue 
influence of powerful individuals or classes to whom 
they ought not to be responsible. 

"This argument is specious, and I once thought it 
conclusive. It now appears to me fallacious. All 
who are fit to influence electors are not, for that rea- 
son, fit to be themselves electors. This last is a much 
greater power than the former, and those may be ripe 
for the minor political function who could not as yet 
be safely trusted with the superior. The opinions and 
wishes of the poorest and rudest class of laborers may 



MODE OF VOTING. - 215 

be very useful as one influence among others on the 
minds of the voters, as well as on those of the Legis- 
lature, and yet it might be highly mischievous to give 
them the preponderant influence, by admitting them, 
in their present state of morals and intelligence, to the 
full exercise of the suffrage. It is precisely this indi- 
rect influence of those who have not the suffrage over 
those who have, which, by its progressive growth, soft- 
ens the transition to every fresh extension of the fran- 
chise, and is the means by which, when the time is 
ripe, the extension is peacefully brought about. But 
there is another and a still deeper consideration, which 
should never be left out of the account in political 
speculations. The notion is itself unfounded that pub- 
licity, and the sense of being answerable to the public, 
are of no use unless the public are qualified to form a 
sound judgment. It is a very superficial view of the 
utility of public opinion to suppose that it does good 
only when it succeeds in enforcing a servile conformi- 
ty to itself To be under the eyes of others — to have 
to defend one's self to others — is never more import- 
ant than to those who act in opposition to the opinion 
of others, for it obliges them to have sure ground of 
their own. Nothing has so steadying an influence as 
working against pressure. Unless when under the 
temporary sway of passionate excitement, no one will 
do that which he expects to be greatly blamed for, 
unless from a preconceived and fixed purpose of his 
own, which is always evidence of a thoughtful and de- 
liberate character, and, except in radically bad men, 
generally proceeds from sincere and strong personal 



216 MODE OF VOTING. 

convictions. Even the bare fact of having to give an 
account of their conduct is a powerful inducement to 
adhere to conduct of which at least some decent ac- 
count can be given. If any one thinks that the mere 
obligation of preserving decency is not a very consid- 
erable check on the abuse of power, he has never had 
his attention called to the conduct of those who do 
not feel under the necessity of observing that restraint. 
Publicity is inappreciable, even when it does no more 
than prevent that which can by no possibility be plaus- 
ibly defended — than compel deliberation, and force 
every one to determine, before he acts, what he shall 
say if called to account for his actions. 

"But, if not now (it may be said), at least hereafter, 
when all are fit to have votes, and when all men and 
women are admitted to vote in virtue of their fitness, 
then there can no longer be danger of class legislation ; 
then the electors, being the nation, can have no inter- 
est apart from the general interest : even if individu- 
als still vote according to private or class inducements, 
the majority will have no such inducement; and as 
there will then be no non-electors to whom they onght 
to be responsible, the effect of the ballot, excluding 
none but the sinister influences, will be wholly bene- 
ficial. 

"Even in this I do not agree. I can not think that 
even if the people were fit for, and had obtained uni- 
versal suffrage, the ballot would be desirable. First, 
because it could not, in such circumstances, be sup- 
posed to be needful. Let us only conceive the state 
of things which the hypothesis implies : a people uni- 



MODE OF VOTING. 217 

versally educated, and every grown-up human being 
possessed of a vote. If, even when only a small pro- 
portion are electors, and the majority of the population 
almost uneducated, public opinion is already, as every 
one now sees that it is, the ruling power in the last 
resort, it is a chimera to suppose that over a commu- 
nity who all read, and who all have votes, any pow- 
er could be exercised by landlords and rich people 
against their own inclination, which it would be at all 
difficult for them to throw off But, though the pro- 
tection of secrecy would then be needless, the control 
of publicity would be as needful as ever. The uni- 
versal observation of mankind has been very falla- 
cious, if the mere fact of being one of the communit}^, 
and not being in a position of pronounced contrariety 
of interest to the public at large, is enough lo insure 
the performance of a public duty, Avithout either the 
stimulus or the restraint derived from the opinion of 
our fellow-creatures. A man's own particular share 
of the public interest, even though he may have no 
private interest drawing him in the opposite direction, 
is not, as a general rule, found sufficient to make him 
do his duty to the public without other external in- 
ducements. Neither can it be admitted that, even if 
all had votes, they would give their votes as honestly 
in secret as in public. The proposition that the elect- 
ors, when they compose the whole of the community, 
can not have an interest in votins; as^ainst the interest 
of the community, will be found, on examination, to 
have more sound than meanino; in it. Thous-h the 
community, as a whole, can have (as the terms imply) 

K 



218 MODE OF VOTING. 

no other interest than its collective interest, any or 
every individual in it may. A man's interest consists 
of whatever he takes interest in. Every body has as 
many different interests as he has feelings ; likings or 
dislikings, either of a selfish or of a better kind. It 
can not be said that any of these, taken by itself, con- 
stitutes 'his interest:' he is a good man or a bad ac- 
cording as he prefers one class of his interests or an- 
other. A man who is a tyrant at home will be apt 
to sympathize with tyranny (when not exercised over 
hhnself ) ; he will be almost certain not to sympathize 
with resistance to tyranny. An envious man will 
vote against Aristides because he is called the Just. 
A selfish man will prefer even a trifling individual 
benefit to his share of the advantage which his coun- 
try would derive from a good law, because interests 
peculiar to himself are those which the habits of his 
mind both dispose him to dwell on and make him 
best able to estimate. A great number of the electors 
will have two sets of preferences — those on private 
and those on public grounds. The last are the only 
ones which the elector would like to avow. The best 
side of their character is that which people are anx- 
ious to show, even to those who are no better than 
themselves. People will give dishonest or mean votes 
from lucre, from malice, from pique, from personal ri- 
valry, even from the interests or prejudices of class or 
sect, more readily in secret than in public. And cases 
exist — they may come to be more frequent — in which 
almost the only restraint upon a majority of knaves 
consists in their involuntary respect for the opinion 



MODE OF VOTING. 219 

of an honest minority. In such a case as that of the 
I'epudiating states of ISTorth America, is there not 
some check to the unprincipled voter in the shame 
of looking an honest man in the face ? Since all this 
good would be sacrificed by the ballot, even in the 
circumstances most favorable to it, a much stronger 
case is requisite than can now be made out for its ne- 
cessity (and the case is continually becoming still 
weaker) to make its adoption desirable,"^"" 

On the other debatable points connected with the 
mode of voting, it is not necessary to expend so many 
words. The system of personal representation, as or- 
ganized b}^ Mr. Hare, renders n.ecessary the employ- 
ment of voting papers. But it appears to me indis- 
pensable that the signature of the elector should be 
affixed to the paper at a public polling-place, or, if 
there be no such place conveniently accessible, at 
some office open to all the world, and in the presence 
of a responsible public officer. The proposal which 
has been tbrown out of allowing the voting papers to 
be filled up at the voter's own residence, and sent by 
the post, or called for by a public officer, I should regard 
as fatal. The act would be done in the absence of the 
salutary and the presence of all the pernicious influ- 
ences. The briber might, in the shelter of privacy, 
behold with his own eyes his bargain fulfilled, and the 
intimidator could see the extorted obedience rendered 
irrevocably on the spot ; while the beneficent counter- 
influence of the presence of those w^ho knew the vo- 
ter's real sentiments, and the inspiring effect of the 

* "Thoughts on Parliamentary R:form," 2d ed., p. 32-36. 



220 MODE OF VOTING. 

sympathy of those of his own party or opinion, would 
be shut out.'^ 

The polling-places should be so numerous as to be 

* This expedient has been recommended both on the score of sav- 
ing expense and on that of obtaining the votes of many electors who 
otherwise would not vote, and who are regarded by the advocates of 
the plan as a particularly desirable class of voters. The scheme has 
been carried into practice in the election of poor-law guardians, and 
its success in that instance is appealed to in favor of adopting it in 
the more important case of voting for a member of the Legislature. 
But the two cases appear to me to differ in the point on which the 
benefits of the expedient depend. In a local election for a special 
kind of administrative business, which consists mainly in the dispen- 
sation of a public fund, it is an object to prevent the choice from be- 
ing exclusively in the hands of those who actively concern themselves 
about it ; for the public interest which attaches to the election being 
of a limited kind, and in most cases not very great in degree, the dis- 
position to make themselves busy in the matter is apt to be in a great 
measure confined to persons who hope to turn their activity to their 
own private advantage ; and it may ^s very desirable to render the 
intervention of other people as little onerous to them as possible, if 
only for the purpose of swamping these private interests. But when 
the matter in hand is the great business of national government, in 
which every one must take an interest who cares for any thing out 
of himself, or who cares even for himself intelligently, it is much rath- 
er an object to prevent those from voting who are indifferent to the 
subject, than to induce them to vote by any other means than that of 
awakening their dormant minds. The voter who does not care enough 
about the election to go to the poll is the very man who, if he can vote 
without that small trouble, will give his vote to the first person who 
asks for it, or on the most trifling or frivolous inducement. A man 
who does not care whether he votes is not likely to care much which 
way he votes ; and he who is in that state of mind has no moral right 
to vote at all ; since, if he does so, a vote which is not the expression 
of a conviction counts for as much, and goes as far in determining 
tlie result as one which represents -the thoughts and purposes of a 
life." — Thoughts, etc., p. 39. 



MODE OF VOTING. 221 

within easy reach of every voter, and no expenses of 
conveyance, at the cost of the candidate, should be tol- 
erated under any pretext. The infirm, and they only 
on medical certificate, should have the right of claim- 
ing suitable carriage conveyance at the cost of the 
state or of the locality. Hustings, poll-clerks, and all 
the necessary machinery of elections should be at the 
public charge. Not only the candidate should not be 
required, he should not be permitted to incur any but 
a limited and trifling expense for his election. Mr. 
Hare thinks it desirable that a sum of £50 should be 
required from every one who places his name on the 
list of candidates, to prevent persons who have no 
chance of success, and no real intention of attempting 
it, from becoming candidates in wantonness or from 
mere love of notoriety, and perhaps carrying ofp a few 
votes which are needed for the return of more serious 
aspirants. There is one expense which a candidate 
or his supporters can not help incurring, and which it 
can hardly be expected that the public should defray 
for every one who may choose to demand it — that of 
making his claims known to the electors by advertise- 
ments, placards, and circulars. For all necessary ex- 
penses of this kind the £50 proposed by Mr. Hare, if 
allowed to be drawn upon for these purposes (it might 
be made £100 if requisite), ought to be sufficient. If 
the friends of the candidate choose to go to expense 
on committees and canvassing, there are no means of 
preventing them; but such expenses out of the candi- 
date's own pocket, or any expenses whatever beyond 
the deposit of £50 (or £100) should be illegal and 



222 MODE OF VOTING. 

punishable. If there appeared any likelihood that 
opinion would refuse to connive at falsehood, a decla- 
ration on oath or honor should be required from ev- 
ery member, on taking his seat, that he had not ex- 
pended, nor would expend, money or money's worth, 
beyond the £50, directly or indirectly, for the pur- 
poses of his election ; and if the assertion were proved 
to be false or the pledge to have been broken, he should 
be liable to the penalties of perjury. It is probable 
that those penalties, by showing that the Legislature 
was in earnest, would turn the course of opinion in 
the same direction, and would hinder it from regard- 
ing, as it has hitherto done, this most serious crime 
against society as a venial peccadillo. When once 
this effect had been produced, there need be no doubt 
that the declaration on oath or honor would be con- 
sidered binding.* " Opinion tolerates a false disclaim- 

* Several of the witnesses before the Committee of the House of 
Commons in 1860, on the operation of the Corrupt Practices Preven- 
tion Act, some of J;hem of great practical experience in election mat- 
ters, were favorable (either absolutely or as a last resort) to the prin- 
ciple of requiring a declaration from members of Parliament, and 
were of opinion that, if supported by penalties, it would be, to a great 
degree, effectual.— (Evidence, p. 46, 54-7, 67, 123, 198-202, 208.) The 
chief commissioner of the Wakefield Inquiry said (in reference cer- 
tainly to a different proposal), "If they see that the Legislature is 
earnest upon the subject, the machinery Avill work. ... I am quite 
sure that if some personal stigma were applied upon conviction of 
bribery, it would change the current of public opinion" (p. 26 and 32). 
A distinguished member of the committee (and of the present cabinet) 
seemed to think it very objectionable to attach the penalties of perjury 
to a merely promissory as distinguished from an assertory oath ; but 
he was reminded that the oath taken by a witness in a court of justice 



MODE OF VOTING. 223 

er only wHen it already tolerates tlie thing disclaimed." 
This is notoriously tlie case with regard to electoral 
corruption. There has never yet been, among poht- 
ical men, any real and serious attempt to prevent brib- 
ery, because there has been no real desire that elec- 
tions should not be costly. Their costliness is an ad- 
vantage to those who can affdil the expense by ex- 
cluding a multitude of competitors ; and any thing, 
however noxious, is cherished as having a conserva- 
tive tendency, if it limits the access to Parliament to 
rich men. This is a rooted feeling among our legis- 

is a promissory oath ; and the rejoinder (that the witness's promise 
relates to an act to be done at once, while the member's would be a 
promise for all future time) would only be to the purpose if it could 
be supposed that the swearer might forget the obligation he had en- 
tered into, or could possibly violate it unawares ; contingencies which, 
in a case like the present, are out of the question. 

A more substantial difficulty is, that one of the forms most frequent- 
ly assumed by election expenditure is that of subscriptions to local 
charities or other local obiccts ; and it would be a strong measure to 
enact that money should not be given in charity within a place by the 
member for it. When such subscriptions are bond fide, the popular- 
ity Avhich may be derived from them is an advantage which it seems 
hardly possible to deny to superior riches. But the greatest part of 
the mischief consists in the fact that money so contributed is employ- 
ed in bribery, under the euphonious name of keeping up the member's 
interest. To guard against this, it should be part of the member's 
promissory declaration that all sums expended by him in the place, 
or for any purpose connected with it or with any of its inhabitants 
(with the exception perhaps of his own hotel expenses) should pass 
through the hands of the election auditor, and be by him (and not by 
the member himself or his friends) applied to its declared purpose. 

The principle of making all lawful expenses of elections a charge, 
not upon the candidate, but upon the locality, was upheld by two of 
the best witnesses (p. 20, 65-70, 277). 



224 MODE OF VOTING. 

lators of both political parties, and is almost the only 
point on which I believe them to be really ill-inten- 
tioned. They care comparatively little who votes, as 
long as they feel assured that none but persons of their 
own class can be voted for. They know that they can 
rely on the fellow-feeling of one of their class with an- 
other, while the subsHs^ience ofnouveaux enrichis who 
are knocking at the door of the class is a still surer 
reliance; and that nothing very hostile to the class 
interests or feelings of the rich need be apprehended 
under the most democratic suffrage, as long as demo- 
cratic persons can be prevented from being elected to 
Parliament. But, even from their own point of view, 
this balancing of evil by evil, instead of combining 
good with good, is a wretched policj^ The object 
should be to bring together the best members of both 
classes, under such a tenure as shall induce them to 
lay aside their class preferences, and pursue jointly 
the path traced by the common interest, instead of al- 
lowing the class feelings of the Many to have full 
swing in the constituencies, subject to the impediment 
of having to act through persons imbued with the 
class feelings of the Few. 

There is scarcely any mode in which political in- 
stitutions are more morally mischievous — work great- 
er evil through their spirit — than by representing po- 
litical functions as a favor to be conferred, a thing 
which the depositary is to ask for as desiring it for 
himself, and even pay for as if it were designed for 
, his pecuniary benefit. Men are not fond of paying 
large sums for leave to perform a laborio.us duty. 



MODE OF VOTING. 225 

Plato had a mucTi juster view of the conditions of 
good government when he asserted that the persons 
who should be sought out to be invested with polit- 
ical power are those who are personally most averse 
to it, and that the only motive which can be relied on 
for inducing the fittest men to take upon themselves 
the toils of government is the fear of being governed 
by worse men. What must an elector think when he 
sees three or four gentlemen, none of them previously 
observed to be lavish of their money on projects of 
disinterested beneficence, vying with one another in 
the sums they expend to be enabled to write M.P. 
after their names? Is it likely he will suppose that 
it is for his interest they incur all this cost ? And if 
he forms an uncomplimentary opinion of their part 
in the affair, what moral obligation is he likely to feel 
as to his own? Politicians are fond of treating it as 
the dream of enthusiasts that the electoral body will 
ever be uncorrupt : truly enough, until they are will- 
ing to become so themselves ; for the electors, assur- 
edly, will take their moral tone from the candidates. 
So long as the elected member, in any shape or man- 
ner, pays for his seat, all endeavors will fail to make 
the business of election any thing but a selfish bar- 
gain on all sides. " So long as the candidate himself, 
and the customs of the world, seem to regard the func- 
tion of a member of Parliament less as a duty to be 
discharged than a personal favor to be solicited, no 
effort will avail to implant in an ordinary voter the 
feeling that the election of a member of Parliament is 
also a matter of duty, and that he is not at liberty to 
K2 



226 MODE OF VOTING. 

bestow his vote on any other consideration than that 
of personal fitness." 

The same principle which demands that no pay- 
ment of money for election purposes should be either 
required or tolerated on the part of the person elect- 
ed, dictates another conclusion, apparently of contrary 
tendency, but really directed to the same object. It 
negatives what has often been proposed as a means of 
rendering Parliament accessible to persons of all ranks 
and circumstances — the payment of members of Par- 
liament. If, as in some of our colonies, there are 
scarcely any fit persons who can afford to attend to 
an unpaid occupation, the payment should be an in- 
demnity for loss of time or money, not a salary. The 
greater latitude of choice which a salary would give 
is an illusory advantage. No remuneration which 
any one would think of attaching to the post wou.ld 
attract to it those who were seriously engaged in oth- 
er lucrative professions, with a prospect of succeeding 
in them. The occupation of a member of Parliament 
would therefore become an occupation in itself, car- 
ried on, like other professions, with a view chiefly to 
its pecuniary returns, and under the demoralizing in- 
fluences of an occupation essentially precarious. It 
would become an object of desire to adventurers of a 
low class ; and 658 persons in possession, with ten or 
twenty times as many in expectancy, would be inces- 
santly bidding to attract or retain the suffrages of the 
electors, by promising all things, honest or dishonest, 
possible or impossible, and rivaling each other in pan- 
dering to the meanest feelings and most ignorant prej- 



MODE OF VOTING. 227 

udices of the vulgarest part of the crowd. The auc- 
tion between Cleon and the sausage-seller in Aris- 
tophanes is a fair caricature of what would be always 
going OD. Such an institution would be a perpetual 
blister applied to the most peccant parts of human 
nature. It amounts to offering 658 prizes for the 
most successful flatterer, the most adroit misleader of 
a body of his fellow-countrymen. Under no despot- 
ism has there been such an organized system of til- 
lage for raising a rich crop of vicious courtiership."^ 
When, by reason of pre-eminent qualifications (as may 
at any time happen to be the case), it is desirable that 
a person entirely without independent means, either 
derived from property or from a trade or profession, 
should be brought into Parliament to render services 
which no other person accessible can render as well, 
there is the resource of a public subscription ; he may 
be supported while in Parliament, like Andrew Mar- 
vel, by the contribiHions of his constituents. This 

• 
* "As Mr. Lorimer remarks, by creating a pecuniary inducement 

to persons of the lowest class to devote themselves to public affairs, 
the calling of the demagogue would be formally inaugurated. Noth- 
ing is more to be deprecated than making it the private interest of a 
number of active persons to urge the form of government in the di- 
rection of its natural perversion. The indications which either a 
multitude or an individual can give when merely left to then* own 
weaknesses, afford but a faint idea of what those weaknesses would 
become when played upon by a thousand flatterers. If there were 
658 places of certain, however moderate emolument, to be gained by 
persuading the multitude that ignorance is as good as knowledge, and 
better, it is terrible odds that they would believe and act upon the 
lesson."" — (Article in Eraser's Magazine for April, 1859, headed ^Re- 
cent Writers on Reform.") 



228 ^ MODE OF VOTING. 

mode is unobjectionable, for such an honor will never 
be paid to mere subserviency : bodies of men do not 
care so much for the difference between one syco- 
phant and another as to go to the expense of his 
maintenance in order to be flattered by that particu- 
lar individual. Such a support will only be given in 
consideration of striking and impressive personal qual- 
ities, which, though no absolute proof of fitness to be 
a national representative, are some presumption of it, 
and, at all events, some guaranty for the possession of 
an independent opinion and will. 



DURATION OF PARLIAMENTS. 229 



• CHAPTER XL 

OF THE DURATION OF PARLIAMENTS. 

After how long a term should members of Par- 
liament be subject to re-election? The principles in- 
v-olved are here very obvious; the difficulty lies in 
their application. On the one hand, the member ought 
not to have so long a tenure of his seat as to make 
him forget his responsibility, take his duties easily, con- 
duct them with a view to his own personal advantage, 
or neglect those free and public conferences with his 
constituents which, whether lie agrees or differs with 
them, are one of the benefits of representative govern- 
ment. On the other hand, he should have such a term 
of office to look forward to as will enable him to be 
judged, not by a single act, but by his course of ac- 
tion. It is important that he should have the great- 
est latitude of individual opinion and discretion com- 
patible with the popular control essential to free gov- 
ernment ; and for this purpose it is necessary that the 
control should be exercised, as in any case it is best 
exercised, after sufficient time has been given him to 
show all the qualities he possesses, and to prove that 
there is some other way than that of a mere obedient 
voter and advocate of their opinions, by which he can 
render himself, in the eyes of his constituents, a desir- 
able and creditable representative. It is impossible to 



230 DURATION OF PARLIAMENTS. 

fix, by any universal rule, the boundary between these 
principles. Where the democratic power in the con- 
stitution is weak or over-passive, and requires stimu^ 
lation ; where the representative, on leaving his con- 
stituents, enters at once into a courtly or aristocratic 
atmosphere, whose influences all tend to deflect his 
course into a different direction from the popular one, 
to tone down any democratic feelings which he may 
have brought with him, and make him forget the wish- 
es and grow cool to the interests of those who chose 
him, the obligation of a frequent return to them for a 
renewal of his commission is indispensable to keeping 
his temper and character up to the right mark. Even 
three years, in such circumstances, are almost too long 
a period, and any longer term is absolutely inadmissi- 
ble. Where, on the contrary, democracy is the as- 
cendant power, and still tends to increase, requiring 
rather to be moderated in its exercise than encouraged 
to any abnormal activity ; where unbounded publici- 
ty and an ever-present newspaper press give the rep- 
resentative assurance that his every act will be imme- 
diately known, discussed, and judged by his constitu- 
ents, and that he is always either gaining or losing 
ground in their estimation, while, by the same means, 
the influence of their sentiments, and all other demo- 
cratic influences, are kept constantly alive and active 
in his own mind, less than five years would hardly be 
a sufficient period to prevent timid subserviency. The 
change which has taken place in English politics as 
to all these features explains why annual Parliaments, 
which forty years ago stood prominently in front of 



DURATION OF PARLIAMENTS. 231 

the creed of the more advanced reformers, are so little 
cared for and so seldom heard of at present. It de- 
serves consideration that, whether the term is short or 
long, during the last year of it the members are in the 
position in which they would always be if Parliaments 
were annual ; so that, if the term were very brief, there 
would virtually be annual Parliaments during a great 
proportion of all time. As things now are, the period 
of seven years, though of unnecessary length, is hardly 
worth altering for any benefit likely to be produced, 
especially since the possibility, always impending, of 
an earlier dissolution keeps the motives for standing 
well with constituents always before the member's 
eyes. 

Whatever may be the term most eligible for the du- 
ration of the mandate, it might seem natural that the 
individual member should vacate his seat at the expi- 
ration of that term from the day of his election, and 
that there should be no general renewal of the whole 
House. A great deal might be said for this system 
if there were any practical object in recommending it. 
But it is condemned by much stronger reasons than 
can be alleged in its support. One is, that there would 
be no means of promptly getting rid of a majority 
which had pursued a course offensive to the nation. 
The certainty of a general election after a limited, 
which would often be a nearly expired period, and 
the possibility of it at any time when the minister ei- 
ther desires it for his own sake, or thinks that it would 
make him popular with the country, tend to prevent 
that wide divergence between the feelings of the as- 



232 DURATION OF PARLIAMENTS. 

sembly and those of the constituency, which might 
subsist indefinitely if the majority of the House had 
always several years of their term still to run — if it re- 
ceived new infusions drop by drop, which would be 
more likely to assume than to modify the qualities of 
the mass they were joined to. It is as essential that 
the general sense of the House should accord in the 
main with that of the nation, as it is that distinguish- 
ed individuals should be able, without forfeiting their 
seats, to give free utterance to the most unpopular sen- 
timents. There is another reason, of much weight, 
against the gradual and partial renewal of a represent- 
ative assembly. It is useful that there should be a pe- 
riodical general muster of opposing forces to gauge 
the state of the national mind, and ascertain, beyond 
dispute, the relative strength of different parties and 
opinions. This is not done conclusively by any par- 
tial renewal, even where, as in some of the French con- 
stitutions, a large fraction — a fifth or a third — go out 
at once. 

The reasons for allowing to the executive the pow- 
er of dissolution will be considered in a subsequent 
chapter, relating to the constitution and functions of 
the executive in a representative government. 



PLEDGES. 283 



CHAPTER XII. 

OUGHT PLEDGES TO BE REQUIRED FROM MEMBERS 
OF PARLIAMENT? 

Should a member of the Legislature be bound by 
the instructions of his constituents? Should he be 
the organ of their sentiments or of his own? their 
embassador to a congress or their professional agent, 
empowered not only to act for them, but to judge for 
them what ought to be done? These two theories 
of the duty of a legislator in a representative govern- 
ment have each its supporters, and each is the recog- 
nized doctrine of some representative governments. 
In the Dutch United Provinces, the members of the 
States-General were mere delegates ; and to such a 
length was the doctrine carried, that when any im- 
portant question arose which had not been provided 
for in their instructions, they had to refer back to their 
constituents, exactly as an. embassador does to the gov- 
ernment from which he is accredited. In this and 
most other countries which possess representative con- 
stitutions, law and custom warrant a member of Par- 
liament in voting according to his opinion of right, 
however different from that of his constituents ; but 
there is a floating notion of the opposite kind, which 
has considerable practical operation on many minds, 
even of members of Parliament, and often makes 



234 PLEDGES. 

them, independently of desire for popularity or con- 
cern for their re-election, feel bound in conscience to 
make their conduct on questions on which their con- 
stituents have a decided opinion be the expression of 
that opinion rather than of their own. Abstractedly 
from positive law, and from the historical traditions 
of any particular people, which of these notions of 
the duty of a representative is the true one ? 

Unlike the questions which we have hitherto treat- 
ed, this is not a question of constitutional legislation, 
but of what may more properly be called constitu- 
tional morality — the ethics of representative govern- 
ment. It does not so much concern institutions as 
the temper of mind which the electors ought to bring 
to the discharge of their functions, the ideas which 
should prevail as to the moral duties of an elector ; 
for, let the system of representation be what it may, 
it will be converted into one of mere delegation if the 
electors so choose. As long as they are free not to 
vote, and free to vote as they like, they can not be 
prevented from making their vote depend on any con- 
dition they thjnk fit to annex to it. By refusing to 
elect any one who will not pledge himself to all their 
opinions, and even, if they please, to consult with 
them before voting on any important subject not fore- 
seen, they can reduce their representative to their 
mere mouthpiece, or compel him in honor, when no 
longer willing to act in that capacity, to resign his 
seat. And since they have the power of doing this, 
the theory of the Constitution ought to suppose that 
they will wish to do it, since the very principle of 



PLEDGES. 235 

constitutional government requires it to be assumed 
that political power will be abused to promote the 
particular purposes of the holder ; not because it al- 
ways is so, but because such is the natural tendency 
of things, to guard against which is the especi^al use of 
free institutions. However wrong, therefore, or how- 
ever foolish, we may think it in the electors to con- 
vert their representative into a delegate, that stretch 
of the electoral privilege being a natural and not im- 
probable one, the same precautions ought to be taken 
as if it were certain. We may hope that the electors 
will not act on this notion of the use of the suffrage ; 
but a representative government needs to be so framed 
that even if they do, they shall not be able to effect 
what ought not to be in the power of any body of 
persons — class legislation for their own benefit. 

When it is said that the question is only one of 
political morality, this does not extenuate its import- 
ance. Questions of constitutional morality are of no 
less practical moment than those relating to the con- 
stitution itself The very existence of some govern- 
ments, and all that renders others endurable, rests on 
the practical observance of doctrines of constitutional 
morality ; traditional notions in the minds of the sev- 
eral constituted authorities, which modify the use that 
might otherwise be made of their powers. In unbal- 
anced governments — pure monarchy, pure aristocra- 
cy, pure democracy — such maxims are the only bar- 
rier which restrains the government from the utmost 
excesses in the direction of its characteristic tenden- 
cy. In imperfectly balanced governments, where 



236 PLEDaES. 

some attempt is made to set constitutional limits to 
the impulses of the strongest power, but where that 
power is strong enough to overstep them with at least 
temporary impunity, it is only by doctrines of consti- 
tutional, morality, recognized and sustained by opin- 
ion, that any regard at all is preserved for the checks 
and limitations of the constitution. In well-balanced 
governments, in which the supreme power is divided, 
and each sharer is protected against the usurpations 
of the others in the only manner possible, namely, by 
being armed for defenses with weapons as strong as 
the others can wield for attack^ the government can 
, only be carried on by forbearance on all sides to ex- 
ercise those extreme powers, unless provoked by con- 
duct equally extreme on the part of some other sharer 
of power ; and in this case we may truly say that only 
by the regard paid to maxims of constitutional moral- 
ity is the constitution kept in existence. The ques- 
tion of pledges is not one of those which vitally con- 
cern the existence of representative governments, but 
it is very material to their beneficial operation. The 
laws can not prescribe to the electors the principles 
by which they shall direct their choice, but it makes 
a great practical difference by what principles they 
think they ought to direct it ; and the whole of that 
great question is involved in the inquiry whether 
they should make it a condition that the representa- 
tive shall adhere to certain opinions laid down for 
him by his constituents. 

No reader of this treatise can doubt what conclu- 
sion, as to this matter, results from the general princi- 



PLEDGES. 237 

pies which it professes. We have from the first af- 
lirrnecl, and unvaryingly kept in view, the coequal im- 
portance of two great requisites of government — re- 
sponsibility to those for whose benefit political power 
ought to be, and always professes to be, employed ; 
and jointly therewith, to obtain, in the greatest meas- 
ure possible, for the function of government, the ben- 
efits of superior intellect, trained by long meditation 
and practical discipline to that special task. If this 
second purpose is worth attaining, it is worth the nec- 
essary price. Superior powers of mind and profound 
study are of no use, if they do not sometimes lead a 
person to different conclusions from those which are 
formed by ordinary powers of mind without study; 
and if it be an object to possess representatives in any 
intellectual respect superior to average electors, it must 
be counted upon that the representative will some- 
times differ in opinion from the majority of his con- 
stituents, and that when he does, his opinion will be 
the oftenest right of the two. It follows that the 
electors will not do wisely if they insist on absolute 
conformity to their opinions as the condition of his re- 
taining his seat. 

The principle is thus far obvious ; but there are real 
difficulties in its application, and we will begin by 
stating them in their greatest force. If it is import- 
ant that the electors should choose a representative 
more highly instructed than themselves, it is no less 
necessary that this wiser man should be responsible to 
them ; in other words, they are the judges of the man- 
ner in which he fulfills his trust; and how are they 



238 PLEDGES. 

to judge except by the standard of their own opin- 
ions ? How are they even to select him, in the first 
instance, but by the same standard ? It will not do 
to choose by mere brilliancy — by superiority of showy 
talent. The tests by which an ordinary man can j udge 
of mere ability are very imperfect ; such as they are, 
they have almost exclusive reference to the arts of 
expression, and little or none to the worth of what is 
expressed. The latter can not be inferred from the 
former ; and if the electors are to put their own opin- 
ions in abeyance, what criterion remains to them of 
the ability to govern well ? Neither, if they could as- 
certain, even infallibly, the ablest man, ought they to 
allow him altogether to judge for them, without any 
reference to their own opinions. The ablest candidate 
may be a Tory, and the electors Liberals ; or a Liber- 
al, and they may be Tories. The political questions 
of the day may be Church questions, and he may be 
a High-Churchman or a Eationalist, while they may 
be Dissenters or Evangelicals, and vice versa. His 
abilities, in these cases, might only enable him to go 
greater lengths, and act with greater effect, in what 
they may conscientiously believe to be a wrong course ; 
and they may be bound, by their sincere convictions, 
to think it more important that their representative 
should be kept, on these points, to what thej^ deem 
the dictate of duty, than that they should be repre- 
sented by a person of more than average abilities. 
They may also have to consider, not solely how they 
can be most ably represented, but how their particu- 
lar moral position and mental point of view shall be 



PLEDGES. 239 

represented at all. The influence of every mode of 
thinking which is shared by numbers ought to be felt 
in the Legislature ; and the Constitution being sup- 
posed to have made due provision that other and con- 
flicting modes of thinking shall be represented like- 
wise, to secure the proper representation for their own 
mode may be the most important matter which the 
electors on the particular occasion have to attend to. 
In some cases, too, it may be necessary that the rep- 
resentative should have his hands tied to keep him 
true to their interests, or rather to the public interest 
as they conceive it. This would not be needful un- 
der a political system which assured them an indefinite 
choice of honest and unprejudiced candidates; but 
under the existing system, in which the electors are 
almost always obliged, by the expenses of election and 
the general circumstances of society, to select their 
representative from persons of a station in life widely 
different from theirs, and having a different class in- 
terest, "v\iho will affirm that they ought to abandon 
themselves to his discretion ? Can we blame an elect- 
or of the poorer classes, who has only the choice among 
two or three rich men, for requiring from the one he 
votes for a pledge to those measures which he con- 
siders as a test of emancipation from the class inter- 
ests of the rich ? It will, moreover, always happen to 
some members of the electoral body to be obliged to 
accept the representative selected by a majority of 
their own side. But, though a candidate of their own 
choosing would have no chance, their votes may be 
necessary to the success of the one chosen for them, 



240 ., PLEDGES. 

and tlieir only means of exerting their share of influ- 
ence on his subsequent conduct may be to make their 
support of him dependent on his pledging himself to 
certain conditions. 

These considerations and counter-considerations are 
so intimately interwoven with one another; it is so 
important that the electors should choose as their 
representatives wiser men than themselves, and should 
consent to be governed according to that superior 
wisdom, while it is impossible that conformity to 
their own opinions, when thej^ have opinions, should 
not enter largely into their judgment as to who pos- 
r esses the wisdom, and how far its presumed possess- 
or has verified the presumption by his conduct, that 
it seems quite impracticable to lay down for the elect- 
or any positive rule of duty ; and the result will de- 
pend less on any exact prescription or authoritative 
doctrine of political morality than on the general 
tone of mind of the electoral body in respect to the 
important requisite of deference to mental superiority. 
Individuals and peoples who are acutely sensible of 
the value of superior wisdom are likely to recognize 
it, where it exists, by other signs than thinking exact- 
ly as they do, and even in spite of considerable differ- 
ences of opinion; and when they have recognized it 
they will be far too desirous to secure it, at any ad- 
missible cost, to be prone to impose their own opinion 
as a law upon persons whom they look up to as wiser 
than themselves. On the other hand, there is a char- 
acter of mind which does not look up to any one ; 
which thinks no 'other person's opinion much better 



PLEDGES. 241 

than its own, or nearly so good as that of a hundred 
or a thousand persons like itself. Where this is the 
turn of mind of the electors, they will elect no one 
who is not, or at least who does not profess to be, the 
image of their own sentiments, and will continue him 
no longer than while he reflects those sentiments in 
his conduct; and all aspirants to political honors will 
endeavor, as Plato says in the Gorgias, to fashion 
themselves after the model of the Demos, and make 
themselves as like to it as possible. It can not be de- 
nied that a complete democracy has a strong tenden- 
cy to cast the sentiments of the electors in this mould. 
Democracy is not favorable to the reverential spirit. 
That it destroys reverence for mere social position 
must be counted among the good, not the bad part of 
its influences, though by doing this it closes the prin- 
cipal sdiool of reverence (as to merely human rela- 
tions) which exists in society. But also democracy, 
in its very essence, insists so much more forcibly on 
the things in which all are entitled to be considered 
equally than on those in which one person is entitled 
to more consideration than another, that respect for 
even personal superiority is likely to be below the 
mark. It is for this, among other reasons, I hold it of 
so much importance that the institutions of the coun- 
try should stamp the opinions of persons of a more ed- 
ucate! class as entitled to greater weight than those of 
the less educated ; and I should still contend for assign- 
ing plurality of votes to authenticated superiority of 
education were it only to give the tone to public feel- 
ing, irrespective of any direct political consequences. 

L 



242 PLEDGES. 

When there does exist in the electoral body an ad- 
equate sense of the extraordinary difference in value 
between one person and another, they will not lack 
signs by which to distinguish the persons whose worth 
for their purposes is the greatest. Actual public serv- 
ices will naturally be the foremost indication : to have 
filled posts of magnitude, and dbne important things 
in them, of which the wisdom has been justified by 
the results ; to have been the author of measures 
which appear from their effects to have been wisely 
planned ; to have made predictions which have been 
often verified by the event, seldom or never falsified 
by it ; to have given advice, which, when taken, has 
been followed by good consequences — when neglect- 
ed, by bad. There is doubtless a large portion of un- 
certainty in these signs of wisdom ; but we are seek- 
ing for such as can be applied by persons of ordinary 
discernment. They will do well not to rely much on 
any one indication unless corroborated by the rest, 
and, in their estimation of the success or merit of any 
practical effort, to lay great stress on the general opin- 
ion of disinterested persons conversant with the sub- 
ject matter. The tests which I have spoken of are 
only applicable to tried men, among 'whom must be 
reckoned those who, though untried practically, have 
been tried speculatively ; who, in public speech or in 
print, have discussed public affairs in a manner which 
proves that they have given 'serious study to them. 
Such persons may, in the mere character of political 
thinkers, have exhibited a considerable amount of the 
same titles to confidence as those who have been 



PLEDGES. 243 

proved in the position of practical statesmen. When 
it is necessary to choose persons wholly untried, the 
best criteria are, reputation for ability among those 
who personally know them, and the confidence placed 
and recommendations given by persons already look- 
ed up to. By tests like these, constituencies who suf- 
ficiently value mental ability, and eagerly seek for it, 
will generally succeed in obtaining men beyond me- 
diocrity, and often men whom they can trust to carry 
on public affairs according to their unfettered judg- 
ment ; to whom it would be an affront to require that 
they should give up that judgment at the behest of 
their inferiors in knowledge. If such persons, honest- 
ly sought, are not to be found, then indeed the elect- 
ors are justified in taking other precautions, for they 
can not be expected to postpone their particular opin- 
ions unless in order that they may be served by a 
person of superior knowledge to their own. They 
would do well, indeed, even then, to remember that, 
when once chosen, the representative, if he devotes 
himself to his dut}^, has greater opportunities of cor- 
recting an original false judgment than fall to the lot 
of most of his constituents ; a consideration which 
generally ought to prevent them (unless compelled by 
necessity to choose some one whose impartiality they 
do not fully trust) from exacting a pledge not to 
change his opinion, or, if he does, to resign his seat. 
But when an unknown person, not certified in unmis- 
takable terms by some high authority, is elected for 
the first time, the elector can not be expected not to 
make conformity to his own sentiments the primary 



244 PLEDGES. 

requisite. It is enougli if he does not regard a subse- 
quent change of those sentiments, honestly avowed, 
with its grounds undisguisedly stated, as a peremp- 
tory reason for withdrawing his confidence. 

Even supposing the most tried ability and acknowl- 
edged eminence of character in the representative, the 
private opinions of the electors are not to be placed 
entirely in abeyance. Deference to mental superiori- 
ty is not to go the length of self-annihilation — abne- 
gation of any personal opinion. But when the differ- 
ence does not relate to the fundamentals of politics, 
however decided the elector may be in his own senti- 
ments, he ought to consider that when an able man 
differs from him there is at least a considerable chance 
of his being in the wrong, and that even if otherwise, 
it is worth while to give up his opinion in things not 
absolutely essential, for the sake of the inestimable 
advantage of having an able man to act for him in the 
many matters in which he himself is not qualified to 
form a judgment. In such cases he often endeavors 
to reconcile both wishes by inducing the able man to 
sacrifice his own opinion on the points of difference ; 
but for the able man to lend himself to this compro- 
mise is treason against his especial office — abdication 
of the peculiar duties of mental supremacy, of which 
it is one of the most sacred not to desert the cause 
which has the clamor against it, nor to deprive of his 
services those of his opinions which need them the 
most. A man of conscience and known ability should 
insist on full freedom to act as he in his own judgment 
deems best, and should not consent to serve on any 



PLEDGES. 245 

otlier terms. But the electors are entitled to know 
how he means to act; what opinions, on all things 
which concern his public duty, he intends should 
guide his conduct. If some of these are unacceptable 
to them, it is for him to satisfy them that he never- 
theless deserves to be their representative ; and if they 
are wise, they will overlook, in favor of his general 
value, many and great differences between his opin- 
ions and their own. There are some differences, how- 
ever, which they can not be expected to overlook. 
Whoever feels the amount of interest in the govern- 
ment of his country which befits a freeman, has some 
convictions on national affairs which are like his life- 
blood; which the strength of his belief in their truth, 
together with the importance he attaches to them, for- 
bid him to make a subject of compromise, or postpone 
to the judgment of any person, however greatly his 
superior. Such convictions, when they exist in a peo- 
ple, or in any appreciable portion of one, are entitled 
to influence in virtue of their mere existence, and not 
solely in that of the probability of their being ground- 
ed in truth. A people can not be well governed in 
opposition to their primary notions of right, even 
though these njay be in some points erroneous. A 
correct estimate of the relation which should subsist 
between governors and governed does not require the 
electors to consent to be represented by one who in- 
tends to govern them in opposition to their funda- 
mental convictions. If they avail themselves of his 
capacities of useful service in other respects at a time 
when the points on which he is vitally at issue with 



246 PLEDGES. 

them are not likely to be mooted, they are justified in 
dismissing him at the first moment when a question 
arises involving these, and on which there is not so 
assured a majority for what they deem right as to 
make the dissenting voice of that particular individu- 
al unimportant. Thus (I mention names to illustrate 
my meaning, not for any personal application) the 
opinions supposed to be entertained by Mr. Cobden 
and Mr. Bright on resistance to foreign aggression 
might be overlooked during the Crimean war, when 
there was an overwhelming national feeling on the 
contrary side, and might yet very properly lead to 
their rejection by the electors at the time of the Chi- 
nese quarrel (though in itself a more doubtful ques- 
tion), because it was then for some time a moot point 
whether their view of the case might not prevail. 

As the general result of what precedes, we may af- 
firm that actual pledges should not be required unless, 
from unfavorable social circumstances or family insti- 
tutions, the electors are so narrowed in their choice as 
to be compelled to fix it on a person presumptively 
under the influence of partialities hostile to their in- 
terest : that they are entitled to a full knowledge of 
the political opinions and sentiments of the candidate; 
and not only entitled, but often bound to reject one 
who differs from themselves on the few articles which 
are the foundation of their political belief: that, in pro- 
portion to the opinion they entertain of the mental su- 
periority of a candidate, they ought to put up with his 
expressing and acting on opinions different from theirs 
on any number of things not included in their funda- 



PLEDGES. 247 

mental articles of belief: that they ought to be unre- 
mitting in their search for a representative of such 
cahbre as to be intrusted with full power of obeying 
the dictates of his own jugdment: that they should 
consider it a duty which they owe to their fellow- 
countrymen to do their utmost toward placing men 
of this quaUty in the Legislature, and that it is of 
much greater importance to themselves to be reprC' 
sented by such a man than by one who professes 
agreement in a greater number of their opinions ; for 
the benefits of his ability are certain, while the hy- 
pothesis of his being wrong and their being right on 
the points of difference is a very doubtful one. 

I have discussed this question on the assumption 
that the electoral system, in all that depends on posi- 
tive institution, conforms to the principles laid down 
in the preceding chapters. Even on this hypothesis, 
the delegation theory of representation seems to me 
false, and its practical operation hurtful, though the 
mischief would in that case be confined within certain 
bounds. But if the securities by which I have en- 
deavored to guard the representative principle are not 
recognized by the Constitution ; if provision is not 
made for the representation of minorities, nor any dif- 
ference admitted in the numerical value of votes, ac- 
cording to some criterion of the amount of .education 
possessed by the voters — in that case, no words can 
exaggerate the importance in principle of leaving an 
unfettered discretion to the representative ; for it would 
then be the only chance, under universal suffrage, for 
any other opinions than those of the majority to be 



248 PLEDGES. 

heard in Parliament. In that falsely called democra- 
cy which is really the exclusive rule of the operative 
classes, all others being unrepresented and unheard, 
the only escape from class legislation in its narrowest, 
and political ignorance in its most dangerous form, 
would lie in such disposition as the uneducated might 
have to choose educated representatives, and to defer 
to their opinions. Some willingness to do this might 
reasonably be expected, and every thing would de- 
pend upon cultivating it to the highest point. But, 
once invested with political omnipotence, if the oper- 
ative classes voluntarily concurred in imposing upon 
themselves in this or any other manner any consider- 
able limitation to their self-opinion and self-will, they 
would prove themselves wiser than any class possess- 
ed of absolute power has shown itself, or, we may ven- 
ture to say, is ever likely to show itself under that 
corrupting influence. 



OF A SECOND CHAMBER. 249 



CHAPTER XIII. 

OF A SECOND CHAMBER. 

Of all topics relating to the theory of representa- 
tive government, none have been the subject of more 
discussion, especially on the Continent, than what is 
known as the question of the Two Chambers. It has 
occupied a greater amount of the attention of think- 
ers than many questions of ten times its importance, 
and has been regarded as a sort of touchstone which 
distinguishes the partisans of limited from those of 
uncontrolled democracy. For my own part, I set lit- 
tle value on any check which a Second Chamber can 
apply to a democracy otherwise unchecked ; and I am 
inclined to think that if all other constitutional ques- 
tions are rightly decided, it is of comparatively little 
importance whether the Parliament consists of two 
Chambers or only of one. 

If there are two chambers, they may either be of 
similar or of dissimilar composition. If of similar, 
both will obey the same influences, and whatever has 
a majority in one of the houses will be likely to have 
it in the other. It is true that the necessity of ob- 
taining the consent of both to the passing of any meas- 
ure may at times be a material obstacle to improve- 
ment, since, assuming both the houses to be represent- 
ative and equal in their numbers, a number slightly 
L2 



250 A SECOND CHAMBER. 

exceeding a fourth of the entire representation maj 
prevent the passing of a bill ; while, if there is but 
one House, a bill is secure of passing if it has a bare 
majority. But the case supposed is rather abstract- 
edly possible than likely to occur in practice. It will 
not often happen that, of two houses similarly com- 
posed, one will be almost unanimous, and the other 
nearly equally divided ; if a majority in one rejects a 
measure, there will generally have been a large mi- 
nority unfavorable to it in the other; any improve- 
ment, therefore, which could be thus impeded, would 
in almost all cases be one which had not much more 
than a simple majority in the entire body, and the 
worst consequence that could ensue would be to de- 
lay for a short time the passing of the measure, or 
give rise to a fresh appeal to the electors to ascertain 
if the small majority in Parliament corresponded to 
an effective one in the country. The inconvenience 
of delay, and the advantage of the appeal to the na- 
tion, might be regarded in this case as about equally 
balanced. 

I attach little weight to the argument oftenest urged 
for having two Chambers — to prevent precipitancy, 
and compel a second deliberation ; for it must be a 
very ill-constituted representative assembly in which 
the established forms of business do not require many 
more than two deliberations. The consideration 
which tells most, in my judgment, in favor of two 
Chambers (and this I do regard as of some moment), 
is the evil effect produced upon the mind of any hold- 
er of power, whether an individual or an assembly, 



A SECOND CHAMBER. 251 

by the consciousness of having only themselves to 
consult. It is important that no set of persons should 
be able, even temporarily, to make their sic volo pre- 
vail without asking any one else for his consent. A 
majority in a single assembly, when it has assumed a 
permanent character — when composed of the same 
persons habitually acting together, and always as- 
sured of victory in their own House — easily becomes 
despotic and overweening if released from the neces- 
sity of considering whether its acts will be concurred 
in by another constituted authority. The same rea- 
son which induced the Romans to have two consuls, 
makes it desirable there should be two Chambers — 
that neither of them may be exposed to the cor- 
rupting influence of undivided power even for the 
space of a single year. One of the most indispensable 
requisites in the practical conduct of politics, especial- 
ly in the management of free institutions, is concilia- 
tion ; a readiness to compromise ; a willingness to 
concede something to opponents, and to shape good 
measures so as to be as little offensive as possible to 
persons of opposite views ; and of this salutary habit, 
the mutual give and take (as it has been called) be- 
tween two houses is a perpetual school — useful as 
such even now, and its utility would probably be 
even more felt in a more democratic constitution of 
the Legislature. 

But the honses need not both be of the same com- 
position ; they may be intended as a check on one 
another. One being supposed democratic, the other 
will naturally be constituted with a view to its being 



252 A SECOND CHAMBEK. 

some restraint upon the democracy. But its efficacy 
in this respect wholly depends on the social support 
which it can command outside the House. An as- 
sembly which does not rest on the basis of some great 
power in the country is ineffectual against one which 
does. An aristocratic House is only powerful in an 
aristocratic state of society. The House of Lords was 
once the strongest power in our Constitution, and the 
Commons only a checking body; but this was when 
the barons were almost the only power out of doors. 
I can not believe that, in a really democratic state of 
society, the House of Lords would be of any practical 
value as a moderator of democracy. When the force 
on one side is feeble in comparison with that on the 
other, the way to give it effect is not to draw both 
out in line, and muster their strength in open field 
over against one another. Such tactics would insure 
the utter defeat of the less powerful. It can only act 
to advantage by not holding itself apart, and compel- 
ling every one to declare himself either with or against 
it, but taking a position among the crowd rather than 
one opposed to it, and drawing to itself the elements 
most capable of allying themselves with it on any 
girven point; not appearing at all as an antagonist 
body, to provoke a general rally against it, but work- 
ing as one of the elements in a mixed mass, infusing 
its leaven, and often making what would be .the weak- 
er part the stronger, by the addition of its influence. 
The really moderating power in a democratic consti- 
tution must act in and through the democratic House. 
That there should be, in every polity, a centre of 



A SECOND CHAMBER. 253 

resistance to the predominant power in the Constitu- 
tion — and in a democratic constitution, therefore, a 
nucleus of resistance to the democracy — I have al- 
ready maintained ; and I regard it as a fundamental 
maxim of government. If any people who possess a 
democratic representation are, from their historical 
antecedents, more willing to tolerate such a centre of 
resistance in the form of a Second Chamber or House 
of Lords than in any other shape, this constitutes a 
strong reason for having it in that shape. But it 
does not appear to me the best shape in itself, nor by 
any means the most efficacious for its object. If there 
are two houses, one considered to represent the peo- 
ple, the other to represent only a class, or not to be 
representative at all, I can not think that, where de- 
mocracy is the ruling power in society, the second 
House would have any real ability to resist even the 
aberrations of the first. It might be suffered to exist 
in deference to habit and association, but not as an ef- 
fective check. If it exercised an independent will, it 
would be required to do so in the same general spirit 
as the other House ; to be equally democratic with it, 
and to content, itself with correcting the accidental 
oversights of the more popular branch of the Legisla- 
ture, or competing with it in popular measures. 

The practicability of any real check to the ascend- 
ency of the majority depends henceforth on the distri- 
bution of strength in the most popular branch of the 
governing body ; and I have indicated the mode in 
which, to the best of my judgment, a balance of forces 
might most advantageously be established there. I 



254 A SECOND CHAMBER. 

have also pointed out that, even if the numerical ma- 
jority were allowed to exercise complete predominance 
by means of a corresponding majority in Parliament, 
yet, if minorities also are permitted to enjoy the equal 
right due to them on strictly democratic principles, 
of being represented proportionally to their numbers, 
this provision will insure the perpetual presence in 
the House, by the same popular title as its other mem- 
bers, of so many of the first intellects in the countr}^, 
that without being in any way banded apart, or in- 
vested with any invidious prerogative, this portion 
of the national representation will have a personal 
weight much more than in proportion to its numerical 
strength, and will afford, in a most effective form, the 
moral centre of resistance which is needed. A second 
Chamber, therefore, is not required for this purpose, 
and would not contribute to it, but might even, in some 
decree, tend to compromise it. If, however, for the oth- 
er reasons already mentioned, the decision were taken 
that there should be such a Chamber, it is desirable 
that it should be composed of elements which, with- 
out being open to the imputation of class interests ad- 
verse to the majority, would incline it to oppose itself 
to the class interests of the majority, and qualify it to 
raise its voice with authority against their errors and 
weaknesses. These conditions evidently are not found 
in a body constituted in the manner of our House of 
Lords. So soon as conventional rank and individual 
riches no longer overawe the democracy, a House of 
Lords becomes insignificant. 

Of all principles on which a wisely conservative 



A SECOND CHAMBER. 255 

body, destined to moderate and regulate democratic 
ascendency, could possibly be constructed, the best 
seems to be that exemplified in the Eoman Senate, it- 
self the most consistently prudent and sagacious body 
that ever administered public affairs. The deficien- 
cies of a democratic assembly, which represents the 
general public, are the deficiencies of the public itself, 
want of special training and knowledge. The appro- 
priate corrective is to associate with it a body of which 
special training and knowledge should be the charac- 
teristics. If one House represents popular feeling, the 
other should represent personal merit, tested and guar- 
anteed by actual public service, and fortified by prac- 
tical experience. If one is the People's Chamber, the 
other should be the Chamber of Statesmen — a council 
composed of all living public men who have passed 
through any important political office or employment. 
Such a chamber would be fitted for much more than 
to be a merely moderating body. It would not be ex- 
clusively a check, but also an impelling force. In its 
hands, the power of holding the people back w^ould be 
vested in those most competent, and who w^ould then 
be most inclined to lead them forward in any right 
course. The council to whom the task would be in- 
trusted of rectifying the people's mistakes w^ould not 
represent a class believed to be opposed to their inter- 
est, but would consist of their own natural leaders in 
the path of progress. No mode of composition could 
approach to this in giving w^eight and efiicacy to their 
function of moderators. It would be impossible to cry 
down a body always foremost in promoting improve- 



256 A SECOND CHAMBER. 

ments as a mere obstructive body, whatever amount 
of mischief it might obstruct. 

Were the place vacant in England for such a Sen- 
ate (I need scarcely say that this is a mere hypothesis), 
it might be composed of some such elements as the 
following : All who were or had been members of the 
Legislative Commission described in a former chapter, 
and which I regard as an indispensable ingredient in 
a well constituted popular government. All who were 
or had been chief justices, or heads of any of the su- 
perior courts of law or equity. All who had for five 
years filled the ofiice of puisne judge. All who had 
held for two years any cabinet office ; but these should 
also be eligible to the House of Commons, and, if elect- 
ed members of it, their peerage or senatorial office 
should be held in suspense. The condition of time is 
introduced to prevent persons from being named cab- 
inet ministers merely to give them a seat in the Sen- 
ate ; and the period of two years is suggested, that the 
same term which qualifies them for a pension might 
entitle them to a senatorship. All who had filled the 
office of commander-in-chief ; and all who, having com- 
manded an army or a fleet, had been thanked by Par- 
liament for military or naval successes. All govern- 
ors general of India or British America, and all who 
had held for ten years any colonial governorships. 
The permanent civil service should also be represent- 
ed ; all should be senators who had filled, during ten 
years, the important offices of under-secretary to the 
Treasury, permanent under-secretary of State, or any 
others equally high and responsible. The functions 



A SECOND CHAMBER. 257 

conferring the senatorial dignity should be limited to 
those of a legal, political, or military or naval charac- 
ter. Scientific and literary eminence are too indefi- 
nite and disputable: they imply a power of selection, 
whereas the other qualifications speak for themselves ; 
if the writings by which reputation has been gained 
are unconnected with politics, they are no evidence of 
the special qualities required, while, if political, they 
would allow successive ministries to deluge the House 
with party tools. 

The historical antecedents of England render it all 
but certain that, unless in the improbable case of a 
violent subversion of the existing Constitution, any 
second Chamber which could possibly exist would 
have to be built on the foundation of the House of 
Lords. It is out of the question to think practically 
of abolishing that assembly, to replace it by such, a 
Senate as I have sketched or by any other ; but there 
might not be the same insuperable difficulty in ag- 
gregating the classes or categories just spoken of to 
the existing body in the character of peers for life. 
An ulterior, and perhaps, on this supposition, a nec- 
essary step, might be, that the hereditary peerage 
should be present in the House by their representa- 
tives instead of personally ; a practice already estab- 
lished in the case of the Scotch and Irish peers, and 
which the mere multiplication of the order will prob- 
ably at some time or other render inevitable. An 
easy adaptation of Mr. Hare's plan w^ould prevent the 
representative peers from representing exclusively the 
party which, has the majority in the peerage. If, for 



258 A SECOND CHAMBER. 

example, one representative were allowed for every 
ten peers, any ten might be admitted to choose a rep- 
resentative, and the peers might be free to group them- 
selves for that purpose as they pleased. The election 
might be thus conducted: All peers who were candi- 
dates for the representation of their order should be 
required to declare themselves such, and enter their 
names in a list. A day and place should be appoint- 
ed at which peers desirous of voting should be pres- 
ent, either in person, or, in the usual Parliamentary 
manner, by their proxies. The votes should be taken, 
each peer voting for only one. Every candidate who 
had as many as ten votes should be declared elected. 
If any one had more, all but ten should be allowed to 
withdraw their votes, or ten of the number should be 
selected by lot. These ten would form his constitu- 
enc}^, and the remainder of his voters would be set 
free to give their votes over again for some one else. 
This process should be repeated until (so far as possi- 
ble) every peer present either personally or by proxy 
was represented. "VYhen a number less than ten re- 
mained over, if amounting to five, they might still be 
allowed to agree on a representative ; if fewer than 
five, their votes must be lost, or they m.ight be per- 
mitted to record them in favor of somebody already 
elected. With this inconsiderable exception, every 
representative peer would represent ten members of 
the peerage, all of whom had not only voted for him, 
but selected him as the one, among all open to their 
choice, by whom they were most desirous to be rep- 
resented. Asa compensation to the peers who were 



A SECOND CHAMBER. 259 

not chosen representatives of their order, they should 
be eligible to the House of Commons; a justice now 
refused to Scotch peers, and to Irish peers in their 
own part of the kingdom, while the representation in 
the House of Lords of any but the most numerous 
party in the peerage is denied equally to both. 

The mode of composing a Senate which has been 
here advocated not only seems the best in itself, but 
is that for which historical precedent and actual bril- 
liant success can to the greatest extent be pleaded. It 
is not, however, the only feasible plan that might be 
proposed. Another possible mode of forming a Sec- 
ond Chamber would be to have it elected by the First, 
subject to the restriction that they should not nomi- 
nate any of their own members. Such an assembly, 
emanating, like the American Senate, from popular 
choice only once removed, would not be considered 
to clash with democratic institutions, and would prob- 
ably acquire considerable popular influence. From 
the mode of its nomination, it would be peculiarly 
unlikely to excite the jealousy of, or to come into any 
hostile collision with the popular House. It would, 
moreover (due provision being made for the repre- 
sentation of the minority), be almost sure to be well 
composed, and to comprise many of that class of high- 
ly capable men who, either from accident or for want 
of showy qualities, had been unwilling to seek, or un- 
able to obtain, the suffrages of a popular constituency. 

The best constitution of a Second Chamber is thafr 
which embodies the greatest number of elemelits ex- 
empt from the class interests and prejudices of the 



260 A SECOND CHAMBER. 

majority, but having in themselves nothing offensive 
to democratic feeling. I repeat, however, that the 
main reliance for tempering the ascendency of the 
majority can not be placed in a Second Chamber of 
any kind. The character of a representative gov- 
ernment is fixed by the constitution of the popular 
House. Compared with this, all other questions re- 
lating to the form of government are insignificant. 



THE EXECUTIVE. 261 



CHAPTER XIY. 

OF THE EXECUTIVE IN A REPKESENTATIVE GOVERN- 
MENT. 

It would be out of place in this treatise to discuss 
the question into what departments or branches the 
executive business of government may most conven- 
iently be divided. In this respect the exigencies of 
different governments are different ; and there is little 
probability that any great mistake will be made in 
the classification of the duties when men are willing 
to begin at the beginning, and do not hold themselves 
bound by the series of accidents which, in an old gov- 
ernment like ours, has produced the existing division 
of the public business. It may be sufficient to say 
that the classification of functionaries should corre- 
spond to that of subjects, and that there should not 
be several departments independent of one another, 
to superintend different parts of the same natural 
whole, as in our own militar}^ administration down to 
a recent period, and in a less degree even at present. 
Where the object to be attained is single (such as that 
of having an efficient army), the authority commis- 
sioned to attend to it should be single likewise. The 
entire aggregate of means provided for one end should 
be under one and the same control and responsibility. 
If they are divided among independent authorities, 



262 THE EXECUTIVE IN A 

the means with each of those authorities become ends, 
and it is the business of nobody except the head of 
the government, who has probably no departmental 
experience, to take care of the real end. The differ- 
ent classes of means are not combined and adapted to 
one another under the guidance of any leading icjea ; 
and while every department pushes forward its own 
requirements, regardless of those of the rest, the pur- 
pose of the work is perpetually sacrificed to the work 
itself 

As a general rule, every executive function, wheth- 
er superior or subordinate, should be the appointed 
duty of some given individual. It should be appar- 
ent to all the world who did every thing, and through 
whose default any thing was left undone. Eesponsi- 
bility is null when nobody knows who is responsible; 
nor, even when real, can it be divided without being 
weakened. To maintain it at its highest, there must 
be one^person who receives the whole praise of what 
is well done, the whole blame of what is ill. There 
are, however, two modes of sharing responsibility; by 
one it is only enfeebled, by the other absolutely de- 
stroyed. It is enfeebled when the concurrence of 
more than one functionary is required to the same 
act. Each one among them has still a real responsi- 
bility ; if a wrong has been done, none of them can 
say he did not do it; he is as much a participant as 
an accomplice is in an offense : if there has been legal 
criminality, they may all be punished legally, and 
their punishment needs not be less severe than if there 
had been only one person concerned. But it is not 



REPEESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 263 

SO with the penalties any more than with the rewards 
of opinion ; these are always diminished by being 
shared. Where there has been no definite legal of- 
fense, no corruption or malversation, only an error or 
an imprudence, or what may pass for such, every par- 
ticipator has an excuse to himself and to the world 
in the fact that other persons are jointly involved with 
him. There is hardly any thing, even to pecuniary 
dishonesty, for which men will not feel themselves 
almost absolved if those whose duty it was to resist 
and remonstrate have failed to do it, still more if they 
have given a formal assent. 

In this case, however, though responsibility is weak- 
ened, there still is responsibility : every one of those 
implicated has in his individual capacity assented to, 
and joined in the act. Things are much worse when 
the act itself is only that of a majority — a board de- 
liberating with closed doors, nobody knowing, or, ex- 
cept in some extreme case, being ever likely to know, 
whether an individual member voted for the act or 
against it. Responsibilit}^, in this case, is a mere 
name. ''Boards," it is happily said by Bentham" 
"are screens." What "the Board" does is the act 
of nobody, and nobody can be made to answer for 
it. The Board suffers, even in reputation, only in 
its collective character; and no individual member 
feels this farther than his disposition leads him to 
identify his own estimation with that of the body — a 
feeling often very strong when the body is a perma- 
nent one, and he is wedded to it for better for worse ; 
but the fluctuations of a modern official career give no 



26€ THE EXECUTIVE IN A 

time for the formation of sucli an esprit de corpsj 
which, if it exists at all, exists only in the obscure 
ranks of the permanent subordinates. Boards, there- 
fore, are not a fit instrument for executive business, 
and are only admissible in it when, for other reasofis, 
to give full discretionary power to a single minister 
would be worse. 

On the other hand, it is also a maxim of experience 
that in the multitude of counselors there is wisdom, 
and that a man seldom judges right, even in his own 
concerns, still less in those of the public, when he 
makes habitual use of no knowledge but his own, or 
that of some single adviser. There is no necessary 
incompatibility between this principle and the other. 
It is easy to give the effective power and the full re- 
sponsibility to one, providing him when necessary 
with advisers, each of whom is responsible only for 
the opinion he gives. 

In general, the head of a department of the execu- 
tive government is a mere politician. He may be a 
good politician and a man of merit; and, unless this 
is usually the case, the government is bad. But his 
general capacity, and the knowledge he ought to pos- 
sess of the general interests of the country, will not, 
unless by occasional accident, be accompanied hj ad- 
equate, and what may be called professional knowl- 
edge of the department over which he is called to 
preside. Professional advisers must therefore be pro- 
vided for him. Wherever mere experience and attain- 
ments are sufficient — wherever the qualities required 
in a professional adviser may possibly be united in 



REPKESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 265 

a single well-selected individual (as in the case, for 
example, of a law officer), one such person for general 
purposes, and a staff of clerks to supply knowledge of 
details, meet the demands of the case. But, more fre- 
quently, it is not sufficient that the minister should 
consult some one competent person, and, when him- 
self not conversant with the subject, act implicitly on 
that person's advice. It is often necessary that he 
should, not only occasionally, but habitually, listen to 
a variety of opinions, and inform his judgment by the 
discussions among a body of advisers. This, for ex- 
ample, is emphatically necessary in military and naval 
affairs. The military and naval ministers, therefore, 
and probably several others, should be provided with 
a council, composed, at least in those two depart- 
ments, of able and experienced professional men. As 
a means of obtaining the best men for the purpose 
under every change of administration, they ought to 
be permanent ; by which I mean that they ought not, 
like the Lords of the Admiralty, to be expected to 
resign with the ministry by whom they were appoint- 
ed ; but it is a good rule that all who hold high ap- 
pointments to which they have risen by selection, 
and not by the ordinary course of promotion, should 
retain their office only for a fixed term, unless reap- 
pointed, as is now the rule with staff appointments in 
the British army. This rule renders appointments 
somewhat less likely to be jobbed, not being a pro- 
vision for life, and at the same time affords a means, 
without affront to any one, of getting rid of those 
who are least worth keeping, and bringing in highly 

M 



266 THE EXECUTIVE IN A 

qualified persons of younger standing, for wtiom 
tliere might never be room if death vacancies or vol- 
untary resignations were waited for. 

The councils should be consultative merely, in this 
sense, that the ultimate decision should rest undi- 
videdly with the minister himself; but neither ought 
they to be looked upon, or to look upon themselves 
as ciphers, or as capable of being reduced to such at 
his pleasure. The advisers attached to a powerful 
and perhaps self-willed man ought to be placed under 
conditions which make it impossible for them, without 
discredit, not to express an opinion, and impossible for 
him not to listen to and consider their recommenda- 
tions, whether he adopts them or not. The relation 
which ought to exist between a chief and this descrip- 
tion of advisers is very accurately hit by the consti- 
tution of the Council of the Governor General and 
those of the different Presidencies in India. These 
councils are composed of persons who have profession- 
al knowledge of Indian affairs, which the governor 
general and governors usually lack, and which it 
would not be desirable to require of them. As a rule, 
every member of council is expected to give an opin- 
ion, which is of course very often a simple acquies- 
cence ; but if there is a difference of sentiment, it is at 
the option of every member, and is the invariable prac- 
tice, to record the reasons of his opinion, the governor 
general, or governor, doing the same. In ordinary 
cases the decision is according to the sense of the ma- 
jority ; the council, therefore, has a substantial part in 
the government ; but if the governor general, or gov- 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 267 

ernor, thinks fit, he may set aside even their unani- 
mous opinion, recording his reasons. The result is, 
that the chief is individually and effectively responsi- 
ble for every act of the government. The members 
of council have only the responsibility of advisers ; 
but it is always known, from documents capable of 
being produced, and which, if called for by Parliament 
or public opinion, always are produced, what each has 
advised, and what reasons he gave for his advice ; 
while, from their dignified position and ostensible par- 
ticipation in all acts of government, they have nearly 
as strong motives to afply themselves to the public 
business, and to form and express a well-considered 
opinion on every part of it, as if the whole responsi- 
bility rested with themselves. 

This mode of conducting the highest class of ad- 
ministrative business is one of the most successful in- 
stances of the adaptation of means to ends which po- 
litical history, not hitherto very prolific in works of 
skill and contrivance, has yet to show. It is one of 
the acquisitions with which the art of politics has been 
enriched by the experience of the East India Compa- 
ny's rule ; and, like most of the other wise contri- 
vances by which India has been preserved to this 
country, and an amount of good government produced 
w^hich is truly wonderful considering the circumstan- 
ces and the materials, it is probably destined to perish 
in the general holocaust which the traditions of In- 
dian government seem fated to undergo since they 
have been placed at the mercy of public ignorance 
and the presumptuous vanity of political men, AI- 



268 THE EXECUTIVE IN A 

ready an outcry is raised for abolishing the councils 
as a superfluous and expensive clog on the wheels of 
government ; while the clamor has long been urgent, 
and is daily obtaining more countenance in the high- 
est quarters, for the abrogation of the professional civil 
service, which breeds the men that compose the coun- 
cils, and the existence of which is the sole guaranty 
for their being of any value. 

A most important principle of good government in 
a popular constitution is that no executive function- 
aries should be appointed by popular election, neither 
by the votes of the people themselves nor by those of 
their representatives. The entire business of govern- 
ment is skilled employment ; the qualifications for the 
discharge of it are of that special and professional kind 
which can not be properly j udged of except by per- 
sons who have themselves some share of those quali- 
fications, or some practical experience of them. The 
business of finding the fittest persons to fill public em- 
ployments — not merely selecting the best who offer, 
but looking out for the absolutely best, and taking 
note of all fit persons who are met with, that they may 
be found when wanted — is very laborious, and re- 
quires a delicate as well as highly conscientious dis- 
cernment ; and as there is no public duty which is in 
general so badly performed, so there is none for which 
it is of greater importance to enforce the utmost prac- 
ticable amount of personal responsibility, by imposing 
it as a special obligation on high functionaries in the 
several departments. All subordinate public officers 



REPKESENTATIVE GOVER^^MENT. 269 

who are not appointed by some mode of public com- 
petition should be selected on the direct responsibility 
of the minister under whom they serve. The minis- 
ters, all but the chief, will naturally be selected by the 
chief; and the chief himself, though really designated 
by Parliament, should be, in a regal government, offi- 
cially appointed by the crown. The functionary who 
appoints should be the sole person empowered to re- 
move any subordinate ofi&cer who is liable to removal, 
which the far greater number ought not to be, except 
for personal misconduct, since it would be in vain to 
expect that the body of persons by whom the whole 
detail of the public business is transacted, and whose 
qualifications are generally of much more importance 
to the public than those of the minister himself, will 
devote themselves to their profession, and acquire the 
knowledge and skill on which the minister must often 
place entire dependence, if they are liable at any mo- 
ment to be turned adrift for no fault, that the minister 
may gratify himself, or promote his political interest 
by appointing somebody else. 

To the principle which condemns the appointment 
of executive officers by popular suffrage, ought the 
chief of the executive, in a republican government, to 
be an exception ? Is it a good rule which, in the 
American Constitution, provides for the election of the 
President once in every four years by the entire peo- 
ple ? The question is not free from difficulty„ There 
is unquestionably some advantage, in a country like 
America, where no apprehension needs be entertained 
of a coup d^etat^ in making the chief minister constitu- 



270 T^E EXECUTIVE IN A 

tionally independent of the legislative body, and ren- 
dering the two great branches of the government, 
while equally popular both in their origin and in their 
responsibility, an effective check on one another. The 
plan is in accordance with that sedulous avoidance of 
the concentration of great masses of power in the same 
hands, which is a marked characteristic of the Ameri- 
can federal Constitution. But the advantage, in this 
instance, is purchased at a price above all reasonable 
estimate of its value. It seems far better that the 
chief magistrate in a republic should be appointed 
avowedly, as the chief minister in a constitutional mon- 
archy is virtually, by the representative body. In the 
first place, he is certain, when thus appointed, to be a 
more eminent man. The party which has the major- 
ity in Parliament would then, as a rule, appoint its 
own leader, who is always one of the foremost, and 
often the very foremost person in political life ; while 
the President of the United States, since the last sur- 
vivor of the founders of the republic disappeared from 
the scene, is almost always either an obscure man, or 
one who has gained any reputation he may possess in 
some other field than politics. And this, as I have 
before observed, is no accident, but the natural effect 
of the situation. The eminent men of a party, in an 
election extending to the whole country, are never its 
most available candidates. All eminent men have 
made personal enemies, or have done something, or, at 
the lowest, professed some opinion obnoxious to some 
local or other considerable division of the community, 
and likely to tell with fatal effect upon the number of 



IIEPJRESENTATIVE GOVERXMEXT. 271 

votes ; whereas a man without antecedents, of whom 
nothing is known but that he professes the creed of 
the party, is readily voted for by its entire strength. 
Another important consideration is the great mischief 
of unintennitted electioneering. When the highest 
dignity in the state is to be conferred by popular elec- 
tion once in every few years, the whole intervening 
time is spent in what is virtually a canvass. Presi- 
dent, ministers, chiefs of parties, and their followers, 
are all electioneerers : the whole community is kept 
intent on the mere personalities of politics, and every 
public question is discussed and decided with less ref- 
erence to its merits than to its expected bearing on the 
presidential election. If a system had been devised 
to make party spirit the ruling principle of action in 
all public affairs, and create an inducement not only 
to make ever}^ question a party question, but to raise 
questions for the purpose of founding parties upon 
them, it would have been difficult to contrive any 
means better adapted to the purpose. 

I will not affirm that it would at all times and places 
be desirable that the head of the executive should be 
so completely dependent upon the votes of a repre- 
sentative assembly as the prime minister is in England, 
and is without inconvenience. If it were thouodit best 

o 

to avoid this, he might, though appointed by Parlia- 
ment, hold his office for a fixed period, independent 
of a Parliamentary vote, which would be the Amer- 
ican system minus the popular election and its evils. 
There is another mode of giving the head of the ad- 
ministration as much independence of the Legislature 



272 THE EXECUTIVE IN A 

as is at all compatible with the essentials of free gov- 
ernment. He never could be unduly dependent on a 
vote of Parliament if he had, as the British prime min- 
ister practically has, the power to dissolve the House 
and appeal to the people ; if, instead of being turned 
out of office by a hostile vote, he could only be reduced 
by it to the alternative of resignation or dissolution. 
The power of dissolving Parliament is one which I 
think it desirable he should possess, even under the 
system by which his own tenure of office is secured to 
him for a fixed period. There ought not to be any 
possibility of that deadlock in politics which would 
ensue on a quarrel breaking out between a president 
and an assembly, neither of whom, during an interval 
which might amount to years, would have any legal 
means of ridding itself of the other. To get through 
such a period without a coup d^etat being attempted, 
on either side or on both, requires such a combination 
of the love of liberty and the habit of self-restraint as 
very few nations have yet shown themselves capable 
of; and though this extremity were avoided, to expect 
that the two authorities would not paralyze each oth- 
er's operations is to suppose that the political life of 
the country will always be pervaded by a spirit of 
mutual forbearance and compromise, imperturbable 
by the passions and excitements of the keenest party 
struggles. Such a spirit may exist, but even where it 
does there is imprudence in trying it too far. 

Other reasons make it desirable that some power 
in the state (which can only be the executive) should 
have the liberty of at any time, and at discretion, call- 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 273 

ing a new Parliament. When there is a real doubt 
which of two contending parties has the strongest fol- 
lowing, it is important that there should exist a con- 
stitutional means of immediately testing the point and 
setting it at rest. No other political topic has a chance 
of being properly attended to while this is undecided; 
and such an interval is mostly an interregnum for pur- 
poses of legislative or administrative improvement, 
neither party having sufficient confidence in its strength 
to attempt things likely to provoke opposition in any 
quarter that has either direct or indirect influence in 
the pending struggle. 

I have not taken account of the case in which the 
vast power centralized in the chief magistrate, and the 
insufficient attachment of the mass of the people to 
free institutions, give him a chance of success in an 
attempt to subvert the Constitution and usurp sover- 
eign power. Where such peril exists, no first magis- 
trate is admissible whom the Parliament can not, by a 
single vote, reduce to a private station. In a state of 
things holding out any encouragement to that most 
audacious and profligate of all breaches of trust, even 
this entireness of constitutional dependence is but a 
weak protection. . • ■ 

Of all of&cers of government, those in whose ap- 
pointment any participation of popular suffrage is the 
most objectionable are judicial ofl&cers. While there 
are no functionaries whose special and professional 
qualifications the popular judgment is less fitted to 
estimate, there are none in whose case absolute im- 
partiality, and freedom from connection with pojiti- 
M2 



27^ THE EXECUTIVE IN A 

cians or sections of politicians, are of any thing like 
equal importance. Some thinkers, among others Mr. 
Bentham, have been of opinion that, although it is 
better that judges should not be appointed by popu- 
lar election, the people of their district ought to have 
the power, after sufiicient experience, of removing 
them from their trust. It can not be denied that the 
irremovability of any public officer to whom great in- 
terests are intrusted is in itself an evil. It is far from 
desirable that there should be no means of getting rid 
of a bad or incompetent judge, unless for such mis- 
conduct as he can be made to answer for in a crimi- 
nal court, and that a functionary on whom so much, 
depends should have the feeling of being free from 
responsibility except to opinion and his own con- 
science. The question however is, whether, in the 
peculiar position of a judge, and supposing that all 
practicable securities had been taken for an honest 
appointment, irresponsibility, except to his own and 
the public conscience, has not, on the whole, less tend- 
ency to pervert his conduct than responsibility to the 
government or to a popular vote. Experience has 
long decided this point in the affirmative as regards 
responsibility to the executive, and the case is quite 
equally strong when the responsibility sought to be 
enforced is to the suffrages of electors. Among the 
good qualities of a popular constituency, those pecul- 
iarly incumbent upon a judge, calmness and impartial- 
ity, are not numbered. Happily, in that intervention 
of popular suffrage which is essential to freedom they 
are not the qualities required. Even the quality of 



KEPKESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 275 

justice, tlaoiigh necessary to all human beings, and 
therefore to all electors, is not the inducement which 
decides any popular election. Justice and impartial- 
ity are as little wanted for electing a member of Par- 
liament as they can be in any transaction of men. 
The electors have not to award something which ei- 
ther candidate has a right to, nor to pass judgment on 
the general merits of the competitors, but to declare 
which of them has most of their personal confidence, 
or best represents their political convictions. A judge 
is bound to treat his political friend, or the person best 
known to him, exactly as he treats other people ; but 
it would be a breach of duty, as well as an absurdit}^, 
if an elector did so. No argument can be grounded 
on the beneficial efiect produced on judges, as on all 
other functionaries, by the moral jurisdiction of opin- 
ion ; for even in this respect, that which really exer- 
cises a useful control over the proceedings of a judge, 
when fit for the judicial ofiice, is not (except some- 
times in political cases) the opinion of the community 
generally, but that of the only public by whom his 
conduct or qualifications can be duly estimated, the 
bar of his own court. I must not be understood to 
say that the participation of the general public in the 
administration of justice is of no importance; it is of 
the greatest; but in what manner? By the actual 
discharge of a part of the judicial ofiice in the capaci- 
ty of jurymen. This is one of the few cases in poli- 
tics in which it is better that the people should act 
directly and personally than through their represent- 
atives, being almost the only case in which the errors 



276 THE EXECUTIVE IN A 

that a person exercising authority may commit can 
be better borne than the consequences of making him 
responsible for them. If a judge could be removed 
:0:-om office by a popular vote, whoever was desirous 
of supplanting him would make capital for that pur- 
pose out of all his judicial decisions ; would carry all 
of them, as far as he found practicable, by irregular 
appeal before a public opinion wholly incompetent, 
for want of having heard the case, or from having 
heard it without either the precautions or the impar- 
tiality belonging to a judicial hearing; would play 
upon popular passion and prejudice where they exist- 
ed, and take pains to arouse them where they did not. 
And in this, if the case were interesting, and he took 
sufficient trouble, he would infallibly be successful, 
unless the judge or his friends descended into the are- 
na, and made equally powerful appeals on the other 
side. Judges would end by feeling that they risked 
their office upon every decision they gave in a case 
susceptible of general interest, and that it was less es- 
sential for them to consider what decision was just, 
than what would be most applauded by the public, or 
V7ould least admit of insidious misrepresentation. The 
practice introduced by some of the new or revised 
State Constitutions in America, of submitting judicial 
officers to periodical popular re-election, will be found, 
I apprehend, to be one of the most dangerous errors 
ever yet committed by democracy ; and, were it not 
that the practical good sense which never totally de- 
serts the people of the United States is said to be pro- 
ducing a reaction, likely in no long time to lead to the 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 277 

retraction of the error, it might with reason be regard- 
ed as the first great downward step in the degenera- 
tion of modern democratic government. 

With regard to that large and important body 
which constitutes the permanent strength of the pub- 
lic service, those who do not change with changes of 
politics, but remain, to aid every minister by their ex- 
perience and traditions, inform him by their knowl- 
edge of business, and conduct official details under his 
general control — those, in short, who form the class 
of professional public servants, entering their profes- 
sion as others do while young, in the hope of rising 
progressively to its higher grades as they advance in 
life — it is evidently inadmissible that these should be 
liable to be turned out, and deprived of the whole 
benefit of their previous service, except for positive, 
proved, and serious misconduct. Not, of course, such 
delinquency only as makes them amenable to the 
law, but voluntary neglect of duty, or conduct imply- 
ing untrustworthiness for the purposes for which their 
trust is given them. Since, therefore, unless in case 
of personal culpability, there is no way of getting rid 
of them except by quartering them on. the public as 
pensioners, it is of the greatest importance that the ap- 
pointments should be well made in the first instance ; 
and it remains to be considered by what mode of ap- 
pointment this purpose can best be attained. 

In making first appointments, little danger is to be 
apprehended from want of special skill and knowledge 
in the choosers, but much from partiality, and private 



578 THE EXECUTIVE IN A 

or political interest. Being all appointed at the com- 
mencement of manhood, not as having learned, but in 
order that they may learn, their profession, the only 
thing by which the best candidates can be discrimi- 
nated is proficiency in the ordinary branches of liber- 
al education ; and this can be ascertained without dif- 
ficulty, provided there be the requisite pains and the 
requisite impartiality in those who are appointed to 
inquire into it. Neither the one nor the other can 
reasonably be expected from a minister, who must 
rely wholly on recommendations, and, however disin- 
terested as to his personal wishes, never will be proof 
against the solicitations of persons who have the pow- 
er of influencing his election, or whose political adher- 
ence is important to the ministry to which he belongs. 
These considerations have introduced the practice of 
submitting all candidates for first appointments to a 
public examination, conducted by persons not engaged 
in politics, and of the same class and quality with the 
examiners for honors at the Universities. This would 
probably be the best plan under any system ; and un- 
der our Parliamentary government it is the only one 
which affords a chance, I do not say of honest ap- 
pointments, but even of abstinence from such as are 
manifestly and flagrantly profligate. 

It is also absolutely necessary that the examina- 
tions should be competitive, and the appointments 
given to those who are most successful. A mere 
pass examination never, in the long run, does more 
than exclude absolute dunces. When the question, 
in the mind of the examiner, lies between blighting 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 279 

tlie prospects of an individual and performing a duty 
to the public wbicb, in the particular instance, seldom 
appears of first-rate importance, and when he is sure 
to be bitterly reproached for doing the first, while in 
general no one will either know or care whether he 
has done the latter, the balance, unless he is a man of 
very unusual stamp, inclines to the side of good-na- 
ture. A relaxation in one instance establishes a claim 
to it in others, which every repetition of indulgence 
makes it more difiicult to resist ; each of these, in suc- 
cession, becomes a precedent for more, until the stand- 
ard of proficiency sinks gradually to something almost 
contemptible. Examinations for degrees at the two 
great Universities have generally been as slender in 
their requirements as those for honors are trying and 
serious. Where there is no inducement to exceed a 
certain minimum, the minimum comes to be the max- 
imum : it becomes the general practice not to aim at 
more ; and as in every thing there are some who do 
not attain all they aim at, however low the standard 
may be pitched, there are always several who fall 
short of it. When, on the contrary, the appointments 
are given to those, among a great number of candi- 
dates, who most distinguish themselves, and where 
the successful competitors are classed in order of mer- 
it, not only each is stimulated to do his very utmost, 
but the influence is felt in every place of lib'^i-al edu- 
cation throughout the Country. It becomes with ev- 
ery schoolmaster an object of ambition and an avenue 
to success to have furnished pupils who have gained 
a high place in these competitions, and there is hardly 



280 THE EXECUTIVE IN A 

any other mode in which the state can do so much to 
raise the quality of educational institutions through- 
out the country. Though the principle of competi- 
tive examinations for public employment is of such 
recent introduction in this country, and is still so im- 
perfectly carried out, the Indian service being as yet 
nearly the only case in which it exists in its complete- 
ness, a sensibly effect has already begun to be pro- 
duced on the places of middle-class education, not- 
withstanding the difficulties which the principle has 
encountered from the disgracefully low existing state 
of education in the country, which these very exami- 
nations have brought into strong light. So contempt- 
ible has the standard of acquirement been found to be, 
among the youths who obtain the nomination from a 
minister, which entitles them to offer themselves as 
candidates, that the competition of such candidates 
produces almost a poorer result than would be obtain- 
ed from a mere pass examination ; for no one would 
think of fixing the conditions of a pass examination 
so low as is actually found sufficient to enable a young 
man to surpass his fellow-candidates. Accordingly, 
it is said that successive years show on the whole a 
decline of attainments, less effort being made; because 
the results of former examinations have proved that 
the exertions then used were greater than would have 
been sufficient to attain the object. Partly from this 
decrease of effort, and partly because, even at the ex- 
aminations which do not require a previous nomina- 
tion, conscious ignorance reduces the number of com- 
petitors to a mere handful, it has so happened that 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 281 

though there have always been a few instances of 
great proficiency, the lower part of the list of success- 
ful candidates represents but a very moderate amount 
of acquirement ; and we have it on the word of the 
commissioners that nearly all who have been unsuc- 
cessful have owed their failure to ignorance, not of 
the higher branches of instruction, but of its very 
humblest elements — spelling and arithmetic. 

The outcries which continue to be made against 
tlaese examinations by some of the organs of opinion 
are often, I regret to say, as little creditable to the 
good faith as to the good sense of the assailants. 
They proceed partly by misrepresentation of the kind 
of ignorance which, as a matter of fact, actually leads 
to failure in the examinations. They quote with em- 
phasis the most recondite questions* which can be 
shown to have been ever asked, and make it appear 
as if unexceptionable answers to all these were made 
the sine qua non of success. Yet it has been repeated 
to satiety that such questions are not put because it 
is expected of every one that he should answer them, 
but in order that whoever is able to do so may have 
the means of proving and availing himself of that 
portion of his knowledge. It is not as a ground of 
rejection, but as an additional means of success, that 
this opportunity is given. We are then asked wheth- 

* Not always, however, the most recondite ; for one of the latest 
denouncers of competitive examination in the House of Commons 
had the naivete to produce a set of almost elementary questions in al- 
gebra, history, and geography, as a proof of the exorbitant amount 
of high scientific attainment which the Commissioners were so wild 
as to exact. 



282 THE EXECUTIVE IN A 

er tlie kind of knoTvledge supposed in this, that, or the 
other question, is calculated to be of any use to the 
candidate after he has attained his object. People 
differ greatly in opinion as to what knowledge is use- 
ful. There are persons in existence, and a late Foreign 
Secretary of State is one of them, who think English, 
spelling a useless accomplishment in a diplomatic at- 
tache or a clerk in a government ofi&ce. About one 
thing the objectors seem to be unanimous, that gen- 
eral mental cultivation is not useful in these emplo}'- 
ments, whatever else may be so. If, however (as I 
presume to think), it is useful, or if any education at 
all is useful, it must be tested by the tests most likely 
to show whether the candidate possesses it or not. 
To ascertain whether he has been well educated, he 
must be interrogated in the things which, he is likely 
to know if he has been well educated, even though 
not directly pertinent to the work to which, he is to 
be appointed. Will those wlio object to his being 
questioned in classics and mathematics, in a country 
where the only things regularly taught are classics 
and matbematics, tell us what they would have him 
questioned in? There seems, however, to be equal 
objection to examining him in these, and to examin- 
ing him in any thing hut these. If the Commissioners 
— anxious to open a door of admission to those who 
have not gone through the routine of a grammar- 
school, or who make up for the smallness of their 
knowledge of what is there taught by greater knowl- 
edge of something else — allow marks to be gained by 
proficiency in any other subject of real utility, they 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 283 

are reproached for that too. Nothing will satisfy the 
objectors but free admission of total ignorance. 

We are triumphantly told that neither Clive nor 
Wellington could have passed the test ^Yhich is pre- 
scribed for an aspirant to an engineer cadetship ; as 
if, because Clive and Wellington did not do what was 
not required of them, they could not have done it if 
it had been required. If it be only meant to inform 
us that it is possible to be a great general without 
these things, so it is without many other things which 
are very useful to great generals. Alexander the 
Great had never heard of Yauban's rules, nor could 
Julius Caesar speak French. We are next informed 
that book-worms, a term which seems to be held ap- 
plicable to whoever has the smallest tincture of book- 
knowledge, may not be good at bodily exercises, or 
have the habits of gentlemen. This is a very com- 
mon line of remark with dunces of condition ; but, 
whatever the dunces may think, they have no monop- 
oly of either gentlemanly habits or bodily activity. 
Wherever these are needed, let them be inquired into 
and separately provided for, not to the exclusion of 
mental qualifications, but in addition. Meanwhile, I 
am credibly informed that in the Military Academy 
at Woplwich the competition cadets are as superior 
to those admitted on the old S3'stem of nomination in 
these respects as in all others; that they learn even 
their drill more quickly, as indeed might be expected, 
for an intelligent person learns all things sooner than 
a stupid one ; and that in general demeanor they con- 
trast so favorably with their predecessors, that the au- 



284 THE EXECUTIVE IN A 

thorities of the institution are impatient for the day 
to arrive when the last remains of the old leaven shall 
have disappeared from the place. If this be so, and it 
is easy to ascertain whether it is so, it is to be hoped 
we shall soon have heard for the last time that igno- 
rance is a better qualification than knowledge for the 
military, and, d fortiori, for every other profession, or 
that any one good quality, however little apparently 
connected with liberal education, is at all likely to be 
promoted by going without it. 

Though the first admission to government employ- 
ment be decided by competitive examination, it would 
in most cases be impossible that subsequent promotion 
should be so decided ; and it seems proper that this 
should take place, as it usually does at present, on a 
mixed system of seniority and selection. Those whose 
duties are of a routine character should rise by senior, 
ity to the highest point to which duties merely of that 
description can carry them, while those to whom func- 
tions of particular trust, and requiring special capacity, 
are confided, should be selected from the body on the 
discretion of the chief of the ofiice. And this selec- 
tion will generally be made honestly by him if the 
original appointments take place by open competition, 
for under that system his establishment will gejierally 
consist of individuals to whom, but for the official con- 
, nection, he would have been a stranger. If among 
them there be any in whom he, or his political friends 
and supporters, take an interest, it will be but occa- 
sionally, and only when to this advantage of connec- 
tion is added, as far as the initiatory examination could 



REPKESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 285 

test it, at least equality of real merit; and, except 
when there is a very strong motive to job these ap- 
pointments, there is always a strong one to appoint 
the fittest person, being the one who gives to his chief 
the most useful assistp,nce, saves him most trouble, and 
helps most to build up that reputation for good man- 
agement of public business which necessarily and prop- 
erly redound to the credit of the minister, however 
much the qualities to which it is immediately owing 
may be those of his subordinates. 



^^^ 



286 LOCAL REPRESENTATR'E BODIES. 



CHAPTER XV. 

OF LOCAL EEPRESEXTATIYE BODIES. 

It is but a small portion of the public business of 
a country which can be well done or safely attempted 
by the central authorities ; and even in our own goy- 
ernment, the least centralized in Europe, the legisla- 
tive portion at least of the governing body busies 
itself far too much with local affairs, employing the 
supreme power of the state in cutting small knots 
which there ought to be other and better means of 
untying. The enormous amount of private busi- 
ness which takes up the time of Parliament and the 
thoughts of its individual members, distracting them 
from the proper occupations of the great council of 
the nation, is felt by all thinkers and observers as a 
serious evil, and, what is worse, an increasing one. 

It would not be appropriate to the limited design 
of this treatise to discuss at large the great question, 
in no way peculiar to representative government, of 
the proper limits of governmental action. I have 
said elsewhere'^ what seemed to me most essential re- 
specting the principles by which the extent of that 
action ought to be determined. But after subtracting 
from the functions performed by most European gov- 

* ''On Liberty," concluding chapter; and, at greater length, in 
the final chapter of " Principles of Political Economy." 



LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 287 

ernments those wliich ought not to be undertaken by 
public authorities at all, there still remains so great 
and various an aggregate of duties, that, if only on 
the principle of division of labor, it is indispensable 
to share them between central and local authorities. 
Not solely are separate executive officers required for 
purely local duties (an amount of separation which 
exists under all governments), but the popular control 
over those officers can only be advantageously exert- 
ed through a separate organ. Their original appoint- 
ment, the function of watching and checking them, 
the duty of providing or the discretion of withhold- 
ing the supplies necessary for their operations, should 
rest, not with the national Parliament or the national 
executive, but with the people of the locality. That 
the people should exercise these functions directly and 
personally is evidently inadmissible. Administration 
b}' the assembled people is a relic of barbarism op- 
posed to the whole spirit of modern life ; yet so much 
has the course of English institutions depended on ac- 
cident, that this primitive mode of local government 
remained the general rule in parochial matters up to 
the present generation ; and, having never been le- 
gally abolished, probably subsists unaltered in many 
rural parishes even now. There remains the plan of 
representative sub - Parliaments for local affairs, and 
these must henceforth be considered as one of the fun- 
damental institutions of a free government. They 
exist in England but very incompletely, and with, 
gi'eat irregularity and want of system ; in some other 
countries much less, popularly governed, their consti- 



288 LOCAL REPBESENTATIVE BODIES. 

tution is far more rational. In England tlaere has al- 
ways been more liberty but worse organization, wbile 
in other countries there is better organization but less 
liberty. It is necessary, then, that, in addition to the 
national representation, there should be municipal and 
provisional representations; and the two questions 
which remain to be resolved are, how the local rep- 
resentative bodies should be constituted, and what 
should be the extent of their functions. 

In considering these questions, two points require 
jm equal degree of our attention : how the local busi- 
ness itself can be best done, and how its transaction 
can be made most instrumental to the nourishment of 
public spirit and the development of intelligence. In 
an earlier part of this inquiry I have dwelt in strong 
language — hardly any language is strong enough to 
express the strength of my conviction — on the im- 
portance of that portion of the operation of free insti- 
tutions which may be called the pu*blic education of 
the citizens. Now of this operation the local admin- 
istrative institutions are the chief instrument. Except 
by the part they may take as jurymen in the admin- 
istration of justice, the mass of the population have 
very little opportunity of sharing personally in the 
conduct of the general affairs of the communit}'-. 
Beading newspapers, and perhaps writing to them, 
public meetings, and solicitations of different sorts ad- 
dressed to the political authorities, are the extent of 
the participation of private citizens in general politics 
during the interval between one Parliamentary elec- 
tion and another. Though it is impossible to exag- 



LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 289 

gerate the importance of these various liberties, both 
as securities for freedom and as means of general culti- 
vation, the practice which they give is more in thinking 
than in action, and in thinking without the respons- 
ibilities of action, which with most people amounts to 
little more than passively receiving the thoughts of 
some one else. But in the case of local bodies, be- 
sides the function of electing, many citizens in turn 
have the chance of being elected, and many, either by 
selection or by rotation, fill one or other of the nu- 
merous local executive offices. In these positions 
they have to act for public interests as well as to think 
and to speak, and the thinking can not all be done by 
proxy. It may be added that these local functions, 
not being in general sought by the higher ranks, car- 
ry down the important political education which they 
are the means of conferring to a much lower grade in 
societ}^ The mental discipline being thus a more im- 
portant feature in local concerns than in the general 
affairs of the state, while there are not such vital in- 
terests dependent on the quality of the administration, 
a greater weight may be given to the former consid- 
eration, and the latter admits much more frequently 
of being postponed to it than in matters of general 
legislation and the conduct of imperial affairs. 

The proper constitution of local representative bod- 
ies does not present much difficulty. The principles 
which apply to it do not differ in any respect from 
those applicable to the national representation. The 
same obligation exists, as in the case of the more im- 
portant function, for making the bodies elective ; and 



290 LOCAL KEPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 

the same reasons operate as in that case, but with 
still greater force, for giving them a -widely demo- 
cratic basis; the dangers being less, and the advant- 
ages, in point of popular education and cultivation, 
in some respects even greater. As the principal duty 
of the local bodies consists of the imposition and ex- 
penditure of 'local taxation, the electoral franchise 
should vest in all who contribute to the local rates, to 
the exclusion of all who do not. I assume that there 
is no indirect taxation, no octroi duties, or that, if there 
are, they are supplementary only, those on whom 
their burden falls being also rated to a direct assess- 
ment. The representation of minorities should be 
provided for in the same manner as in the national 
Parliament, and there are the same strong reasons for 
plurality of votes; only there is not so decisive an 
objection, in the inferior as in the higher body, to 
making the plural voting depend (as in some of the 
local elections of our own country) on a mere money 
qualification; for the honest and frugal dispensation 
of money forms so much larger a part of the business 
of the local than of the national body, that there is 
more justice as well as policy in allowing a greater 
proportional influence to those who have a larger 
money interest at stake. 

In the most recently established of our local repre- 
sentative institutions, the Boards of Guardians, the 
justices of peace of the district sit ex officio along with 
the elected members, in number limited by law to a 
third of the whole. In the peculiar constitution of 
English society, I have no doubt of the beneficial ef- 



LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 291 

feet of this provision. It seeures the presence in 
these bodies of a more educated class than it would 
perhaps be practicable to attract thither on any other 
terms ; and while the limitation in number of the ex 
officio members precludes them from acquiring pre-- 
dominance bj mere numerical strength, they, as a vir- 
tual representation of another class, having sometimes 
a different interest from the rest, are a check upon the 
class interests of the farmers or petty shopkeepers 
who form the bulk of the elected guardians. A sim- 
ilar commendation can not be given to the constitu- 
tion of the only provincial boards we possess, the 
Quarter Sessions, consisting of the justices of peace 
alone, on whom, over and above their judicial duties, 
some of the^most important parts of the administra- 
tive businesb of the country depend for their perform- 
ance. The mode of formation of these bodies is most 
anomalous, they being neither elected, nor, in any 
proper sense of the term, nominated, but holding their 
important functions, like the feudal lords to whom 
they succeeded, virtually by right of their acres ; the 
appointment vested in the crown (or, speaking prac- 
tically, in one of themselves, the lord lieutenant) be- 
ing made use of only as a means of excluding any 
one who it is thought would do discredit to the body, 
or, now and then, one who is on the wrong side in 
politics. The institution is the most aristocratic in 
principle which now remains in England; far more 
so than the House of Lords, for it grants public 
money and disposes of important public interests, not 
in conjunction with a popular assembly, but alone. 



292 LOCAL KEPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 

It is clung to with proportionate tenacity by our aris- 
tocratic classes, but is obviously at variance with all 
the principles which are the foundation of representa- 
tive government. In a County Board there is not 
^the same justification as in Boards of Gruardians for 
even an admixture of ex officio with elected members, 
since the business of a county being on a sufficiently 
large scale to be an object of interest and attraction to 
country gentlemen, they would have no more difficul- 
ty in getting themselves elected to the Board than 
they have in being returned to Parliament as county 
members. 

In regard to the proper circumscription of the con- 
stituencies which elect the local representative bodies, 
the principle which, when applied as an exclusive and 
unbending rule to Parliamentary representation, is 
inappropriate, namely, community of local interests, is 
here the only just and applicable one. The very ob- 
ject of having a local representation is in order that 
those who have any interest in common which they 
do not share with the general body of their country- 
men may manage that joint interest by themselves, 
and the purpose is contradicted if the distribution of 
the local representation follows any other rule than 
the grouping of those joint interests. There are lo- 
cal interests peculiar to every town, whether great or 
small, and common to all its inhabitants ; every town, 
therefore, without distinction of size, ought to have 
its municipal council. It is equally obvious that 
every town ought to have but one. The different 
quarters of the same town have seldom or never any 



LOCAL KEPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 293 

material diversities of local interest : they all require 
to have tlie same things done, the same expenses in- 
curred ; and, except as to their churches, which it is 
probably desirable to leave under simply parochial 
management, the same arrangements may be made to 
serve for all. Paving, lighting, water supply, drain- 
age, port and market regulations, can not, without 
great waste and inconvenience, be different for differ- 
ent quarters of the same town. The subdivision of 
London into six or seven independent districts, each 
with its separate arrangements for local business (sev- 
eral of them without unity of administration even 
within themselves), prevents the possibility of con- 
secutive or well-regulated co-operation for common 
objects, precludes any uniform principle for the dis- 
charge of local duties, compels the general govern- 
ment to take things upon itself which would be best 
left to local authorities if there were any w^hose au- 
thority extended to the entire metropolis, and answers 
no purpose but to keep up the fantastical trappings 
of that union of modern jobbing and antiquated fop- 
pery, the Corporation of the City of London. 

Another equally important principle is, that in each 
local circumscription there should be but one elective 
body for all local business, not different bodies for dif- 
ferent parts of it. Division of labor does not mean 
cutting up every business into minute fractions; it 
means the union of such operations as are fit to be 
performed by the same persons, and the separation of 
such as can be better performed by different persons. 
The executive duties of the locality do indeed require 



294 LOCAL EEPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 

to be divided into departments for the same reason as 
those of the state — because they are of divers kinds, 
each requiring knowledge peculiar to itself, and need^ 
ing, for its due performance, the undivided attention 
of a specially qualified functionary. But the reasons 
for subdivision which apply to the execution do not 
apply to the control. The business of the elective 
body is not to do the work, but to see that it is prop- 
erly done, and that nothing necessary is left undone. 
This function can be fulfilled for all departments by 
the same superintending body, and by a collective and 
comprehensive far better than by a minute and micro- 
scopic view. It is as absurd in public affairs as it 
would be in private, that every workman should be 
looked after by a superintendent to himself. The 
government of the crown consists of many depart- 
ments, and there are many ministers to conduct them, 
but those ministers have not a Parliament apiece to 
keep them to their duty. The local, like the national 
Parliament, has for its proper business to consider the 
interest of the locality as a whole, composed of parts 
all of which must be adapted to one another, and at- 
tended to in the order and ratio of their importance. 
There is another very weighty reason for uniting the 
control of all the business of a locality under one body. 
The greatest imperfection of popular local institutions, 
and the chief cause of the failure which so often at- 
tends them, is the low calibre of the men by whom 
they are almost always carried on. That these should 
be of a very miscellaneous character is, indeed, part of 
the usefulness of the institution ; it is that circumstance 



LOCAL KEPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 295 

chiefly whicli renders it a school of political capacity 
and general intelligence. But a school supposes teach- 
ers as well as scholars : the utility of the instruction 
greatly depends on its bringing inferior minds into 
contact with superior, a contact which in the ordinary 
course of life is altogether exceptional, and the want 
of which contributes more than any thing else to keep 
the generality of mankind on one level of contented 
ignorance. The school, moreover, is worthless, and a 
school of evil instead of good, if, through the want of 
due surveillance, and of the presence within itself of a 
higher order of characters, the action of the body is 
allowed, as it so often is, to degenerate into an equally 
unscrupulous and stupid pursuit of the self-interest 
of its members. Now it is quite hopeless to induce 
persons of a high class, either socially or intellectual- 
ly, to take a share of local administration in a corner 
by piecemeal, as members of a Paving Board or a 
Draining Commission. The entire local business of 
their town is not more than a sufficient object to in- 
duce men whose tastes incline them, and whose knowl- 
edge qualifies them for national affairs, to become 
members of a mere local body, and devote to it the 
time and study which are necessary to render their 
presence any thing more than a screen for the jobbing 
of inferior persons, under the shelter of their respons- 
ibility. A mere Board of Works, though it compre- 
hend the entitle metropolis, is sure to be composed of 
the same class of persons as the vestries of the London 
parishes ; nor is it practicable, or even desirable, that 
such should not f(frm the majority; but it is import- 



296 LOCAL REPEESENTATIVE BODIES. 

ant for every purpose whicli local bodies are design- 
ed to serve, whether it be the enlightened and honest 
performance of their special duties, or the cultivation 
of the political intelligence of the nation, that every 
such body should contain a portion of the very best 
minds of the locality, who are thus brought into per- 
petual contact, of the most useful kind, with minds of 
a lower grade, receiving from them what local or pro- 
fessional knowledge they have to give, and, in return, 
inspiring them with a portion of their own more en- 
larged ideas, and higher and more enlightened pur- 
poses. 

A mere village has no claim to a municipal repre- 
sentation. By a village I mean a place whose inhab- 
itants are not markedly distinguished by occupation 
or social relations from those of the rural districts ad- 
joining, and for whose local wants the arrangements 
made for the surrounding territory will suffice. Such 
small places have rarely a sufficient public to furnish 
a tolerable municipal council : if they contain any tal- 
ent or knowledge applicable to public business, it is 
apt to be all concentrated in some one man, who there- 
by becomes the dominator of the place. It is better 
that such places should be merged in a larger circum- 
scription. The local representation of rural districts 
will naturally be determined by geographical consid- 
erations, with due regard to those sympathies of feel- 
ing by which human beings are so much aided to act 
in concert, and which partly follow historical bounda- 
ries, such as those of counties or provinces, and partly 
community of interest and occupation, as in agricul* 



LOCAli REPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 297 

tural, maritime, manufacturing, or mining districts. 
Different kinds of local business may require different 
areas of representation. The Unions of parishes have 
been fixed on as the most appropriate basis for the 
representative bodies which superintend the relief of 
indigence ; while, for the proper regulation of high- 
ways, or prisons, or police, a larger extent, like that of 
an average county, is not more than sufiicient. In 
these large districts, therefore, the maxim that an elect- 
ive body constituted in any locality should have au- 
thority over all the local concerns common to i\e lo- 
cality, requires modification from another principle, 
as well as from the competing consideration of the im- 
portance of obtaining for the discharge of the local 
duties the highest qualifications possible. For exam- 
ple, if it be necessary (as I believe it to be) for the 
proper administration of the poor-laws that the area 
of rating should not be more extensive than most of 
the present Unions, a principle which requires a Board 
of Guardians for each Union, yet, as a much more 
highly qualified class of persons is likely to be obtain- 
able for a County Board than those who compose an 
average Board of Guardians, it may, on that ground, 
be expedient to reserve for the County Boards some 
higher descriptions of local business, which might oth- 
erwise have been conveniently managed within itself 
by each separate Union. 

Besides the controlling council or local sub-Par- 
liament, local business has its executive department. 
With respect to this, the same questions arise as with 
respect to the executive authorities in the state, and 
K2 



298 LOCAL KEPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 

they may, for the most part, be answered in the same 
manner. The principles applicable to all public trusts 
are in substance the same. In the first place, each 
executive officer should be single, and singly responsi- 
ble for the whole of the duty committed to his charge. 
In the next place, he should be nominated, not elect- 
ed. It is ridiculous that a surveyor, or a health offi- 
cer, or even a collector of rates should be appointed 
by popular suffrage. The popular choice usually de- 
pends on interest with a few local leaders, who, as they 
are not supposed to make the appointment, are not re- 
sponsible for it ; or on an appeal to sympathy, found- 
ed on having twelve children, and having been a rate- 
payer in the parish for thirty years. If, in cases of 
this description, election by the population is a farce, 
appointment by the local representative body is little 
less objectionable. Such bodies have a perpetual tend- 
ency to become joint-stock associations for carrying 
into effect the private jobs of their various members. 
Appointments should be made on the individual re- 
sponsibility of the chairman of the body, let him be 
called mayor^ chairmaii of the Quarter Sessions, or by 
whatever other title.. He occupies in the locality a po- 
sition analogous to that of the prime minister in the 
state, and under a well-organized system the appoint- 
ment and watching of the local officers would be the 
most important part of his duty;; he himself being ap- 
pointed by the council from its own number, subject 
either to annual re-election, or to removal by a vote 
of the body. 

From the constitution of the local bodies, I now pass 



LOCAL KEPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 299 

to the equally important and more difficult subject of 
their proper attributions. This question divides it- 
self into two parts : what should be their duties, and 
whether they should have full authority within the 
sphere of those duties, or should be liable to any, and 
what, interference on the part of the central govern- 
ment. 

It is obvious, to begin with, that all business pure- 
ly local — all which concerns only a single locality — 
should devolve upon the local authorities. The pav- 
ing, lighting, and cleansing of the streets of a town, 
and, in ordinary circumstances, the draining of its 
houses, are of little consequence to any but its inhab- 
itants. The nation at large is interested in them in 
no other way than that in which it is interested in the 
private well-being of any of its individual citizens. 
But among the duties classed as local, or performed 
by local functionaries, there are many w^hich might 
with equal propriety be termed national, being the' 
share belonging to the locality of some branch of the 
public administration in the efficiency of which the 
whole nation is alike interested : the jails, for instance, 
most of which in this country are under county man- 
agement ; the local police ; the local administration of 
justice, much of which, especially in corporate towns, 
is performed by officers elected by the locality, and 
paid from local funds. None of these can be said to 
be matters of local, as distinguished from natioiml im- 
portance. It would not be a matter personally indif- 
ferent to the rest of the country if any part of it be- 
came a nest of robbers or a focus of demoralization. 



800 LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 

owing to tlie maladministration of its police ; or if, 
through the bad regulations of its jail, the punishment 
which the courts of justice intended to inflict on the 
criminals confined therein (who might have come 
from, or committed their offenses in, any other dis- 
trict) might be doubled in intensity or lowered to prac- 
tical impunity. The points, moreover, which consti- 
tute good management of these things are the same 
every where ; there is no good reason why police, or 
jails, or the administration of justice should be differ- 
ently managed in one part of the kingdom and in an- 
other, while there is great peril that in things so im- 
portant, and to which the most instructed minds avail- 
able to the state are not more than adequate, the low- 
er average of capacities which alone can be counted on 
for the service of the localities might commit errors of 
such magnitude as to be a serious blot upon the gen- 
eral administration of the country. Security of per- 
son and property, and equal justice between individ- 
uals, are the first needs of society and the primary 
ends of government ; if these things can be left to any 
responsibility below the highest, there is nothing ex- 
cept w^ar and treaties which requires a general gov- 
ernment at all. Whatever are the best arrangements 
for securing these primary objects should be made uni- 
versally obligatory, and, to secure their enforcement, 
should be placed imder central superintendence. It 
is oft^n useful, and with the institutions of our own 
country even necessar}^, from the scarcity, in the local- 
ities, of of&cers representing the general government, 
that the execution of duties imposed by the central 



LOCAL EEPKESENTATIVE BODIES. 301 

authority should be intrusted to functionaries appoint- 
ed for local purposes by the locality. But experience 
is daily forcing upon the public a conviction of the 
necessity of having at least inspectors appointed by 
the general government to see that the local ofS.cers 
do their duty. If prisons are under local manage- 
ment, the central government appoints inspectors of 
prisons, to take care that the rules laid down by Par- 
liament are observed, and to suggest others if the state 
of the jails shows them to be requisite, as there are in- 
spectors of factories and inspectors of schools, to watch 
over the observance of the Acts of Parliament rela- 
ting to the first, and the fulfillment of the conditions 
on which state assistance is granted to the latter. 

But if the administration of justice, police and jails 
included, is both so universal a concern, and so much 
a matter of general science, independent of local pecul- 
iarities, that it may be, and ought to be, uniformly reg- 
ulated throughout the country, and its regulation en- 
forced by more trained and skillful hands than those 
of purely local authorities, there is also business, such 
as the administration of the poor-laws, sanitary regu- 
lation, and others, which, while really interesting to the 
whole country, can not, consistently with the very pur- 
poses of local administration, be managed otherwise 
than by the localities. In regard to such duties, the 
question arises how far the local authorities ought to 
be trusted with discretionary power, free from any su- 
perintendence or control of the state. 

To decide this question, it is essential to consider 
what is the comparative position of the central and 



802 LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 

the local authorities as to capacity for the work, and 
security against negligence or abuse. In the first 
place, the local representative bodies and their officers 
are almost certain to be of a much lower grade of in- 
telligence and knowledge than Parliament and the na- 
tional executive. Secondly, besides being themselves 
of inferior qualifications, they are watched by, and ac- 
countable to an inferior public opinion. The public 
under whose eyes they act, and by whom they are 
criticised, is both more limited in extent and gener- 
ally far less enlightened than that which surrounds 
and admonishes the highest authorities at the capital, 
while the comparative smallness of the interests in- 
volved causes even that inferior public to direct its 
thoughts to the subject less intently and with less 
solicitude. Far less interference is exercised by the 
press and by public discussion, and that which is ex- 
ercised may with much more impunity be disregard- 
ed in the proceedings of local than in those of nation- 
al authorities. Thus far, the advantage seems wholly 
on the side of management by the central govern- 
ment ; but, when we look more closely, these motives 
of preference are found to be balanced by others fully 
as substantial. If the local authorities and public are 
inferior to the central ones in knowledge of the prin- 
ciples of administration, they have the compensatory 
advantage of a far more direct interest in the^esult. 
A man's neighbors or his landlord may be much clev- 
erer than himself, and not without an indirect interest 
in his prosperity, but, for all that, his interests will be 
better attended to in his own keeping than in theirs. 



LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE BOLIES. 80o 

It is farther to be remembered tbat, even supposing 
the central government to administer through its own 
officers, its officers do not act at the centre, but in the 
locality ; and however inferior the local public may 
be to the central, it is the local public alone which 
has any opportunity of watching them, and it is the 
local opinion alone w^hich either acts directly upon 
their own conduct, or calls the attention of the gov- 
ernment to the points in which they may require cor- 
rection. It is but in extreme cases that the general 
opinion of the countr}* is brought to bear at all upon 
details of local administration, and still more rarelv 
has it the means of deciding upon them with any just 
appreciation of the case. ^STow the local opinion nec- 
essarily acts far more forcibly upon purely local ad- 
ministrators. They, in the natural course of things, 
are permanent residents, not expecting to be with- 
drawn from the place when they cease to exercise 
authority in it ; and their authority itself depends, by 
supposition, on the will of the local public. I need 
not dwell on the deficiencies of the central authority 
in detailed knowledge of local persons and things, and 
the too great engrossment of its time and thoughts by 
other concerns to admit of its acquiring the quantity 
and quality of local knowledge necessary even for 
deciding on complaints, and enforcing responsibility 
from so great a number of local agents. In the de- 
tails of management, therefore, the local bodies will 
generally have the advantage, but in comprehension 
of the principles even of purely local management, 
the superiority of the central government, when right- 



804 LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 

ly constituted, ought to be prodigious, not only hy 
reason of the probably great personal superiority of 
the individuals composing it, and the multitude of 
thinkers and writers who are at all times engaged in 
pressing useful ideas upon their „ notice, but also be- 
cause the knowledge and experience of any local au- 
thority is but local knowledge and experience, con- 
fined to their own part of the country and its mode 
of management, whereas the central government has 
the means of knowing all that is to be learned from 
the united experience of the whole kingdom, with the 
addition of easy access to that of foreign countries. 

The practical conclusion from these premises is not 
difficult to draw. The authority which is most con- 
versant with principles should be supreme over prin- 
ciples, while that which is most competent in details 
should have the details left to it. The principal busi- 
ness of the central authority should be to give instruc- 
tion, of the local authority to apply it. Power may 
be localized, but knowledge, to be most useful, must 
be centralized ; there must be somewhere a focus at 
which all its scattered rays are collected, that the bro- 
ken and colored lights which exist elsewhere may find 
there what is necessary to complete and purify them. 
To every branch of local administration which affects 
the general interest there should be a corresponding 
central organ, either a minister, or some specially ap- 
pointed functionary under him, even if that function- 
ary does no more than collect information from all 
quarters, and bring the experience acquired in one lo« 
cality to the knowledge of another where it is wanted. 



LOCAL KEPKESENTATIVE BODIES. 305 

But tliere is also something more than this for the 
central authority to do. It ought to keep open a per- 
petual communication with the localities— informing 
itself by their experience, and them by its own ; giv- 
ing advice freely when asked, volunteering it when 
seen to be required ; compelling publicity and record- 
ation of proceedings, and enforcing obedience to every 
general law which the Legislature has laid down on 
the subject of local management. That some such 
laws ought to be laid down few are likely to deny. 
The localities may be allowed to mismanage their 
own interests, but not to prejudice those of others, nor 
violate those principles of justice between one person 
and another of which it is the duty of the state to 
maintain the rigid observance. If the local majority 
attempts to oppress the minority, or one class another, 
the state is bound to interpose. For example, all lo- 
cal rates ought to be voted exclusivelj^ by the local 
representative body; but that body, though elected 
solely by rate-payers, may raise its revenues by im- 
posts of such a kind, or assess them in such a man- 
ner, as to throw an unjust share of the burden on the 
poor, the rich, or some particular class of the popula- 
tion : it is the duty, therefore, of the Legislature, while 
leaving the mere amount of the local taxes to the dis- 
cretion of the local body, to lay down authoritatively 
the mode of taxation and rules of assessment which 
alone the localities shall be permitted to use. Again, 
in the administration of public charity, the industry 
and morality of the whole laboring population de- 
pends, to a most serious extent, upon adherence to 



306 LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 

certain fixed principles in awarding relief. Though 
it belongs essentially to the local functionaries to de- 
termine who, according to those principles, is entitled 
to be relieved, the national Parliament is the proper 
authority to prescribe the principles themselves; and 
it would neglect a most important part of its duty if 
it did not, in a matter of such grave national concern, 
lay down imperative rules, and make effectual pro- 
vision that those rules should not be departed from. 
What power of actual interference with the local ad- 
ministrators it may be necessary to retain, for the due 
enforcement of the laws, is a question of detail into 
which it would be useless to enter. The laws them- 
selves will naturally define the penalties, and fix the 
mode of their enforcement. It may be requisite, to 
meet extreme cases, that the power of the centi'al au- 
thority should extend to dissolving the local repre- 
sentative council or dismissing the local executive, 
but not to making new appointments or suspending 
the local institutions. Where Parliament has not in- 
terfered, neither ought any branch of the executive to 
interfere with authority ; but as an adviser and critic, 
an enforcer of the laws, and a denouncer to Parlia- 
ment or the local constituencies of conduct which it 
deems condemnable, the functions of the executive 
are of the greatest possible value. 

Some may think that, however much the central 
authority surpasses the local in knowledge of the prin- 
ciples of administration, the great object which has 
been so much insisted on, the social and political edu- 
cation of the citizens, requires that they should be left 



LOCAL KEPKESENTATIVE BODIES. 807 

to manage these matters by their own, however im- 
perfect lights. To this it might be answered that the 
education of the citizens is not the only thing to be 
considered; government and administration do not 
exist for that alone, great as its importance is. But 
the objection shows a very imperfect understanding 
of the function of popular institutions as a means of 
political instruction. It is but a poor education that 
associates ignorance with ignorance, and leaves them, 
if they care for knowledge, to grope their way to it 
without help, and to do without it if they do not. 
What is wanted is the means of making ignorance 
aware of itself, and able to profit by knowledge ; ac- 
customing minds which know only routine to act 
upon and feel the value of principles ; teaching them 
to compare different modes of action, and learn, by 
the use of their reason, to distinguish the best. When 
we desire to have a good school, we do not eliminate 
the teacher. The old remark, " As the schoolmaster 
is, so will be the school," is as true of the indirect 
schooling of grown people by public business as of 
the schooling of youth in academies and colleges. A 
government which attempts to do every thing is aptly 
compared by M. Charles de Eemusat to a schoolmas- 
ter who does all the pupils' tasks for them ; he may 
be very popular with the pupils, but he will teach 
them little. A government, on the other hand, which 
neither does any thing itself that can possibly be done 
by any one else, nor shows any one else how to do 
any thing, is like a school in which there is no school- 
master, but only pupil-teachers who have never them- 
selves been taught. 



808 NATIONALITY. 



CHAPTER XYL 

OF NATIONALITY AS CONNECTED WITH REPRESENT- 
ATIVE GOVERNMENT. 

A PORTION of mankind may be said to constitute a 
nationality if they are united among themselves by 
common sympathies which do not exist between them 
and any others — which make them co-operate with 
each, other more willingly than with other people, de- 
sire to be under the same government, and desire that 
it should be government by themselves, or a portion 
of themselves, exclusively. This feeling of nation- 
ality may have been generated by various causes. 
Sometimes it is the effect of identity of race and de- 
scent. Community of language and community of 
religion greatly contribute to it. Geographical limits 
are one of its causes. But the strongest of all is iden- 
tity of political antecedents ; the possession of a na- 
tional history, and consequent community of recollec- 
tions ; collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and 
regret, connected with the same incidents in the past. 
None of these circumstances, however, are either in- 
dispensable or necessarily sufficient by themselves. 
Switzerland has a strong sentiment of nationalit}^, 
though the cantons are of different races, different 
languages, and different religions. Sicily has hither- 
to felt itself quite distinct in nationality from Naples, 
notwithstanding identity of religion, almost identity 



NATIONALITY. 809 

of language, and a considerable amount of common 
historical antecedents. The Flemish and the Wal- 
loon provinces of Belgium, notwithstanding diversity 
of race and language, have a much greater feeling of 
common nationality than the former have with Hol- 
land, or the latter with France. Yet in general the 
national feeling is proportionally weakened by the 
failure of any of the causes which contribute to it. 
Identity of language, literature, and, to some extent, 
of race and recollections, have maintained the feeling 
of nationality in considerable strength among the dif- 
ferent portions of the German name, though they have 
at no time been really united under the same govern- 
ment; but the feeling has never reached to making 
the separate states desire to get rid of their autonomy. 
Among Italians, an identity far from complete of lan- 
guage and literature, combined with a geographical 
position which separates them by a distinct line from 
other countries, and, perhaps more than every thing 
else, the possession of a common name, which makes 
them all glory in the past achievements in arts, arms, 
politics, religious primacy, science, and literature, of 
any who share the same designation, give rise to an 
amount of national feeling in the population which, 
though still imperfect, has been sufficient to produce 
the great events now passing before us, notwithstand- 
ing a great mixture of races, and although they have 
never, in either ancient or modern history, been under 
the same government, except while that government 
extended or was extending itself over the greater part 
of the known world. 



310 NATIONALITY. 

Where the sentiment of nationality exists in any 
force, there is a primd facie case for uniting all the 
members of the nationality under the same govern- 
ment, and a government to themselves apart. This 
is merely saying that the question of government 
ought to be decided by the governed. One hardly 
knows what any division of the human race should 
be free to do if not to determine with which of the 
various collective bodies of human beings they choose 
to associate themselves. But, when a people are ripe 
for free institutions, there is still a more vital consid- 
eration. Free institutions are next to impossible in a 
country made up of different nationalities. Among a 
people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read 
and speak different languages, the united public opin- 
ion necessary to the working of representative gov- 
ernment can not exist. The influences which form 
opinions and decide political acts are different in the 
different sections of the country. An altogether dif- 
ferent set of leaders have the confidence of one part 
of the country and of another. The same books, news- 
papers, pamphlets, speeches, do not reach them. One 
section does not know what opinions or what instiga- 
tions are circulating in another. The same incidents, 
the same acts, the same system of government, affect 
them in different ways, and each fears more injury to 
itself from the other nationalities than from the com- 
mon arbiter, the state. Their mutual antipathies are 
generally much stronger than dislike of the govern- 
ment. That any one of them feels aggrieved by the 
policy of the common ruler is sufficient to determine 



NATIONALITY. 811 

another to support that poUcy. Even if all are ag- 
grieved, none feel that they can rely on the others for 
fidelity in a joint resistance ; the strength of none is 
sufficient to resist alone, and each may reasonably 
think that it consults its own advantage most by bid- 
ding for the favor of the government against the rest. 
Above all, the grand and only reliable security in the 
last resort against the despotism of the government is 
in that case wanting — the sympathy of the army with 
the people. The military are the part of every com- 
munity in whom, from the nature of the case, the dis- 
tinction between their fellow-countrymen and foreign- 
ers is the deepest and strongest. To the rest of the 
people foreigners are merely strangers ; to the soldier, 
they are men against whom he may be called, at a 
week's notice, to fight for life or death. The difference 
to him is that between friends and enemies — we may 
almost say between fellow-men. and another kind of 
animals; for, as respects the enemy, the only law is 
that of force, and the only mitigation the same as in 
the case of other animals — that of simple human- 
it}^ Soldiers to whose feelings half or three fourths 
of the subjects of the same government are foreigners, 
will have no more scruple in mowing them down, and 
no more desire to ask the reason why, than they would 
have in doing the same thing against declared ene- 
mies. An army composed of various nationalities has 
no other patriotism than devotion to the flag. Such 
armies have been the executioners of liberty through 
the whole duration of modern history. The sole bond 
which holds them together is their officers and the 



812 NATIONALITY. 

government which they serve, and their only idea, if 
they have any, of public duty, is obedience to orders. 
A government thus supported, by keeping its Hunga- 
rian regiments in Italy and its Italian in Hungary, 
can long continue to rule in both places with the iron 
rod of foreign conquerors. 

If it be said that so broadly -marked a distinction 
between what is due to a fellow-countryman and what 
i.s due merely to a human creature is more worthy of 
ravages than of civilized beings, and ought, with the 
utmost energy, to be contended against, no one holds 
tiiat opinion more strongly than myself But this 
otgect, one of the worthiest to which human endeavor 
can be directed, can never, in the present state of civ- 
ilization, be promoted by keeping different nationali- 
-ties of any thing like equivalent strength under the 
same government. In a barbarous state of society the 
case is sometimes different. The government may 
then be interested in softening the antipathies of the 
races, that peace may be preserved and the country 
more easily governed. But when there are either free 
institutions, or a desire for them, in any of the peoples 
artificially tied together, the interest of the govern- 
ment lies in an exactly opposite direction. It is then 
interested in keeping up and envenoming their antip- 
athies, that they may be prevented from coalescing, 
and it may be enabled to use some of them as took 
for the enslavement of others. The Austrian court 
has now for a whole generation made these tactics its 
principal means of government, with what fatal suc- 
cess at the tirae of the Vienna insurrection and the 



NATIONALITY. 313 

Hungarian contest the world knows too well. Hap- 
pily there are now signs that improvement is too far 
advanced to permit this policy to be any longer suc- 
cessful. 

For the preceding reasons, it is in general a neces- 
sary condition of free institutions that the boundaries 
of governments should coincide in the main with 
those of nationalities. But several considerations are 
liable to conflict in practice with this general prin- 
ciple. In the first place, its application is often pre- 
cluded by geographical hinderances. There are parts 
even of Europe in which different nationalities are so 
locally intermingled that it is not practicable for them 
to be under separate governments. The population 
of Hungary is composed of Magyars, Slovacks, Croats, 
Serbs, Roumans, and in some districts Germans, so 
mixed up as to be incapable of local separation ; and 
there is no course open to them but to make a virtue 
of necessity, and reconcile themselves to living togeth- 
er under equal rights and laws. Their community of 
servitude, which dates only from the destruction of 
Hungarian independence in 1849, seems to be ripen- 
ing and disposing them for such an equal union. The 
German colony of East Prussia is cut off from Ger- 
many by part of the ancient Poland, and being too 
weak to maintain separate independence, must, if ge- 
ographical continuity is to be maintained, be either 
under a non-German government, or the intervening 
Polish territory must be under a German one. An- 
other considerable region in which the dominant ele- 
ment of the population is Germ5,n, the provinces of 





814: NATIONALITY. 

Courland, Esthonia, and Livonia, is condemned bj its 
local situation to form part of a Slavonian state. In 
Eastern Germany itself there is a large Slavonic pop- 
ulation ; Bohemia is principally Slavonic, Silesia and 
other districts partially so. The most united country 
in Europe, France, is far from being homogeneous: 
independently of the fragments of foreign nationalities 
at its remote extremities, it consists, as language and 
history prove, of two portions, one occupied almost ex- 
clusively by a Gallo-Koraan population, while in the 
other the Frankish, Burgundian, and other Teutonic 
races form a considerable ingredient. 

When proper allowance has been made for geo- 
graphical exigencies, another more purely moral and 
social consideration offers itself. Experience proves 
that it is possible for one nationality to merge and be 
absorbed in another; and when it was originally an 
inferior and more backward portion of the human 
race, the absorption is greatly to its advantage. No- 
body can suppose that it is not more beneficial to a 
Breton, or a Basque of French Kavarre, to be brought 
into the current of the ideas and feelings of a highly 
civilized and cultivated people — to be a member of 
the French nationality, admitted on equal terms to all 
the privileges of French citizenship, sharing the ad- 
vantages of French protection, and the dignity and 
prestige of French power — than to sulk on his own 
rocks, the half-savage relic of past times, revolving in 
his own little mental orbit, without participation or 
interest in the general movement of the world. The 
same remark applies to the Welshman or the Scotti^li 
Highlander as members of the British nation. 



NATIONALITY. 315 

Whatever really tends to the admixture of nation- 
alities, and the blending of their attributes and pecul- 
iarities in a common union, is a benefit to the human 
race. JSTot by extinguishing types, of which, in these 
cases, sufficient examples are sure to remain, but by 
softening their extreme forms, and filling up the in- 
tervals between them. The united people, like a 
crossed breed of animals (but in a still greater degree, 
because the influences in operation are moral as well 
as physical), inherits the special aptitudes and excel- 
lencies of all its progenitors, protected by the admix- 
ture from being exaggerated into the neighboring 
vices. But, to render this admixture possible, there 
must be peculiar conditions. The combinations of 
circumstances which occur, and which affect the re- 
sult, are various. 

The nationalities brought together under the same 
government may be about equal in numbers and 
strength, or they may be very unequal. If unequal, 
the least numerous of the two may either be the su- 
perior in civilization, or the inferior. Supposing it 
to be superior, it may either, through that superiority, 
be able to acquire ascendency over the other, or it 
may be overcome by brute strength and reduced to 
subjection. This last is a sheer mischief to the hu- 
man race, and one which civilized humanity with one 
accord should rise in arms to prevent. The absorp- 
tion of Greece by Macedonia was one of the greatest 
misfortunes which ever happened to the world ; that 
of any of the principal countries of Europe by Kussia 
would be a similar one. 



316 NATIONALITY. 

If the smaller nationality, supposed to be the more 
advanced in improvement, is able to overcome the 
greater, as tbe Macedonians, re-enforced by the Grreeks, 
did Asia, and the English India, there is often a gain 
to civilization, but the conquerors and the conquered 
can not in this case live together under the same free 
institutions. The absorption of the conquerors in 
the less advanced people would be an evil : these must 
be governed as subjects, and the state of things is 
either a benefit or a misfortune, according as the sub- 
jugated people have or have not reached the state in 
which it is an injury not to ba under a free govern- 
ment, and according as the conquerors do or do not 
use their superiority in a manner calculated to fit the 
conquered for a higher stage of improvement. This 
topic will be particularly treated of in a subsequent 
chapter. 

When the nationality which succeeds in overpow- 
ering the other is both the most numerous and the 
most improved, and especially if the subdued nation- 
ality is small, and has no hope of reasserting its inde- 
pendence, then, if it is governed with any tolerable 
justice, and if the members of the more powerful na- 
tionality are not made odious by being invested with 
exclusive privileges, the smaller nationality is grad- 
ually reconciled to its position, and becomes amalga- 
mated with the larger. No Bas-Breton, nor even any 
Alsatian, has the smallest wish at the present day to 
be separated from France. If all Irishmen have not 
yet arrived at the same disposition toward England, 
it is partly because they are su^ciently numerous to 



NATIONALITY. 617 

be capable of constituting a respectable nationality 
by themselves, but principally because, until of late 
years, they had been so atrociously governed that all 
their best feelings combined with their bad ones in 
rousing bitter resentment against the Saxon rule. 
This disgrace to England and calamity to the whole 
empire has, it may be truly said, completely ceased 
for nearly a generation. No Irishman is now less free 
than an Anglo-Saxon, nor has a less share of every 
benefit either to his country or to his individual for- 
tunes than if he were sprung from any other portion 
of the British dominions. The only remaining real 
grievance of Ireland, that of the State Church, is one 
which half, or nearly half the people of the larger isl- 
and have in common with them. There is now next 
to nothing, except the memory of the past, and the 
difference in the predominant religion, to keep apart 
two races perhaps the most fitted of an}- two in the 
world to be the completing counterpart of one an- 
other. The consciousness of being at last treated not 
only with equal justice, but with equal consideration, 
is making such rapid way in the Irish nation as to be 
wearing off all feelings that could make them insen- 
sible to the benefits which the less numerous and less 
wealthy people must necessarily derive from being 
fellow-citizens instead of foreigners to those who are 
not only their nearest neighbors, but the wealthiest, 
and one of the freest, as well as most civilized and 
powerful nations of the earth. 

The cases in which the greatest practical obstacles 
exist to the blending of nationalities are when the 



818 NATIONALITY. 

nationalities which have been bound together are 
nearly equal in numbers and in the other elements of 
power. In such cases, each, confiding in its strength, 
and feeling itself capable of maintaining an equal 
struggle with any of the others, is unwilling to be 
merged in it ; each cultivates with party obstinacy its 
distinctive peculiarities; obsolete customs, and even 
declining languages, are revived, to deepen the sepa- 
ration ; each deems itself tyrannized over if any au- 
thority is exercised within itself by functionaries of a 
rival race ; and whatever is given to one of the con- 
flicting nationalities is considered to be taken from all 
the rest. When nations thus divided are under a des- 
potic government which is a stranger to all of them, 
or which, though sprung from one, yet feeling greater 
interest in its own power than in any sympathies of 
nationality, assigns no privilege to either nation, and 
chooses its instruments indifferently from all, in the 
course of a few generations identity of situation often 
produces harmony of feeling, and the different races 
come to feel toward each other as fellow-countrymen, 
particularly if they are dispersed over the same tract 
of country. But if the era of aspiration to free gov- 
ernment arrives before this fusion has been effected, 
the opportunity has gone by for effecting it. From 
that time, if the unreconciled nationalities are geo- 
graphically separate, and especially if their local posi- 
tion is such that there is no natural fitness or con- 
venience in their being under the same government 
(as in the case of an Italian province under a French 
or German yoke), there is not only an obvious pro- 



NATIONALITY. 819 

priety, but, if either freedom or concord is cared for, 
a necessity for breaking the connection altogether. 
There may be cases in which the provinces, after sep- 
aration, might usefully remain united by a federal 
tie ; but it generally happens that if they are willing 
to forego complete independence, and become mem- 
bers of a federation, each of them has other neighbors 
with whom it would prefer to connect itself, having 
more sympathies in common, if not also greater com- 
munity of interest. 



320 FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS. 



CHAPTER XVIL 

OF FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS. 

Portions of mankind who are not fitted or not 
disposed to live under the same internal government 
may often, with advantage, be federally united as to 
their relations with foreigners, both to prevent wars 
among themselves, and for the sake of more effectual 
protection against the aggression of powerful states. 

To render a federation advisable several conditions 
are necessary. The first is that there should be a suf- 
ficient amount of mutual sympathy among the popu- 
lations. The federation binds them always to fight 
on the same side ; and if they have such feelings to- 
ward one another, or such diversity of feeling toward 
their neighbors that they would generally prefer to 
fight on opposite sides, the federal tie is neither likely 
to be of long duration, nor to be well observed while 
it subsists. The sympathies available for the purpose 
are those of race, language, Teligion, and, above all, 
of political institutions, as conducing most to a feel- 
ing of identity of political interest. When a few free 
states, separately insufficient for their own defense, are 
hemmed in on all sides by military or feudal mon- 
archs, who hate and despise freedom even in a neigh- 
bor, those states have no chance for preserving liberty 
and its blessings but by a federal union. The com- 



FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS. 821 

mon interest arising from this cause has in Switzer- 
land, for several centuries, been found adequate to 
maintain efficiently the federal bond, in spite not only 
of difference of religion when religion was the grand 
source of irreconcilable political enmity throughout 
Europe, but also in spite of great weakness in the con- 
stitution of the federation itself In America, where 
all the conditions for the maintenance of union exist 
at the highest point, with the sole drawback of differ- 
ence of institutions in the single but most important 
article of slavery, this one difference goes so far in al- 
ienating from each other's sympathies the two divi- 
sions of the Union as to be now actually effecting the 
disruption of a tie of so much value to them both. 

The second condition for the stability of a federal 
government is that the separate states be not so pow- 
erful as to be able to rely for protection against for- 
eign encroachment on their individual strength. If 
they are, they will be apt to think that they do not 
gain, by union with others, the equivalent of what 
the}^ sacrifice in their own liberty of action ; and con- 
secj^uently, whenever the policy of the confederation, 
in things reserved to its cognizance, is different from 
that which any one of its members would separately 
pursue, the internal and sectional breach will, through 
absence of sufficient anxiety to preserve the Union, 
be in danger of going so far as to dissolve it. 

A third condition, not less important than the two 
others, is that there be not a very marked inequali- 
ty of strength among the several contracting states. 
They can not, indeed, b© exaotly equal in resources ; 
02 



in all federations there will be a gradation of power 
among the members; some will be more populous, 
rich, and civilized than others. There is a wide dif- 
ference in wealth and population between New York 
and Khode Island ; between Berne, and Zug or Glaris. 
The essential is, that there should not be any one 
state so much more powerful than the rest as to be 
capable of vying in strength with many of them com- 
bined. If there be such a one, and only one, it will 
insist on being master of the joint deliberations ; if 
there be two, they will be irresistible when they agree; 
and whenever they differ, every thing will be decided 
by a struggle for ascendencj^ between the rivals. This 
cause is alone enough to reduce the German Bund to 
almost a nullity, independently of its wretched intern- 
al constitution. It effects none of the real purposes 
of a confederation. It has never bestowed on Germa- 
ny a uniform system of customs, nor so much .as a uni- 
form coinage, and has served only to give Austria 
and Prussia a legal right of pouring in their troops to 
assist the local sovereigns in keeping their subjects 
obedient to despotism, while, in regard to external 
concerns, the Bund would make all Germany a de- 
pendency of Prussia if there were no Austria, and of 
Austria if there were no Prussia ; and, in the mean 
time, each petty prince has little choice bat to be a 
partisan of one or the other, or to intrigue with for- 
eign governments against both. 

There are two different modes of organizing a fed- 
eral union. The federal authorities may represent the 
governments solely, and their acts may be obligatory 



FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS. 323 

only on the governments as such, or they may have 
the power of enacting laws and issuing orders which 
are binding directly on individual citizens. The for- 
mer is the plan of the German so-called Confederation, 
and of the Swiss Constitution previous to 1847. It 
was tried in America for a few years immediately fol- 
lowing the War of Independence. The other princi- 
ple is that of the existing Constitution of the United 
States, and has been adopted within the last dozen 
years by the Swiss Confederac}^ The federal Con- 
gress of the American Union is a substantive part of 
the government of every individual state. Within 
the limits of its attributions, it makes laws which are 
obeyed by every citizen individually, executes them 
through its own officers, and enforces them by its own 
tribunals. This is the only principle which has been 
found, or which is ever likely to produce an effective 
federal government. A union between the govern- 
ments only is a mere alliance, and subject to all the 
contingencies which render alliances precarious. If 
the acts of the President and of Congress were bind- 
ing solely on the governments of Kew York, Virginia, 
or Pennsylvania, and could only be carried into effect 
through orders issued by those governments to offi- 
cers appointed by them, under responsibility to their 
own courts of justice, no mandates of the federal gov- 
ernment which were disagreeable to a local majority 
would ever be executed. Kequisitions issued to a gov> 
ernment have no other sanction or means of enforce- 
ment than war, and a federal army would have to be 
always in readiness to enforce the decrees of the fedc 



324 FEDERAL KEPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS. 

eration against any recalcitrant state, subject to the 
probability that other states, sympathizing with the 
recusant, and perhaps sharing its sentiments on the 
particular point in dispute, would withhold their con- 
tingents, if not send them to fight in the ranks of the 
disobedient state. Such a federation is more likely to 
be a cause than a preventive of internal wars ; and if 
such was not its effect in Switzerland until the events 
of the years immediately preceding 1847, it was only 
because the federal government felt its weakness so 
strongly that it hardly ever attempted to exercise any 
real authority. In America, the experiment of a fed- 
eration on this principle broke down in the first few 
years of its existence, happily while the men of en- 
larged knowledge and acquired ascendency who found- 
ed the independence of the republic were still alive to 
guide it through the difiicult transition. The "Fed- 
eralist," a collection of papers by three of these emi- 
nent men, written in explanation and defense of the 
new federal Constitution while still awaiting the na- 
tional acceptance, is even now the most instructive 
treatise we possess on federal government. In Ger- 
many, the more imperfect kind of federation, as all 
know, has not even answered the purpose of maintain- 
ing an alliance. It has never, in any European war, 
prevented single members of the confederation from 
allying themselves with foreign .powers against the 
rest. Yet this is the only federation which seems pos- 
sible among monarchical states. A king, who holds 
his power by inh-eritance, not by delegation, and who 
can not be deprived of it, nov made responsible to any 



FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS. 325 

one for its use, is not likely to renounce having a sep- 
arate army, or to brook the exercise of sovereign au- 
thority over his own subjects, not through him, but 
directly by another power. To enable two or more 
countries under kingly government to be joined to- 
gether in an effectual confederation, it seems necessary 
that they should all be under the same king. England 
and Scotland were a federation of this description dur- 
ing the interval of about a century between the union 
of the crowns and that of the Parliaments. Even this 
was effective, not through federal institutions, for none 
existed, but because the regal power in both Constitu- 
tions was so nearly absolute as to enable the foreign 
policy of both to be shaped according to a single will. 
Under the more perfect mode of federation, where 
every citizen of each particular state owes obedience 
to two governments, that of his own state and that 
of the federation, it is evidently necessary not only 
that the constitutional limits of the authority of each 
should be precisely and clearly defined, but that the 
power to decide between them in any case of dispute 
should not reside in either of the governments, or in 
any functionary subject to it, but in an umpire inde- 
pendent of both. There must be a Supreme Court 
of Justice, and a system of subordinate courts in ev- 
ery state of the Union, before whom such questions 
shall be carried, and whose judgment on them, in the 
last stage of appeal, shall be final. Every state of the 
Union, and the federal government itself, as well as 
every functionary of each, must be liable to be sued 
in those courts for exceeding their powers, or for non- 



826 FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS. 

performance of their federal duties, and must in gen- 
eral be obliged to employ those courts as the instru- 
ment for enforcing their federal rights. This involves 
the remarkable consequence, actually realized in the 
United States, that a court of justice, the highest fed- 
eral tribunal, is supreme over the various govern- 
ments, both state and federal, having the right to de- 
clare that any law made, or act done by them, exceeds 
the powers assigned to them by the federal Consti- 
tution, and, in consequence, has no legal validity. It 
was natural to feel strong doubts, before trial had been 
made, how such a provision would work ; whether 
the tribunal would have the courage to exercise its 
constitutional power ; if it did, whether it would ex- 
ercise it wisely, and whether the governments would 
consent to submit peaceably to its decision. The dis- 
cussions on the American Constitution, before its final 
adoption, give evidence that these natural apprehen- 
sions were strongly felt ; but they are now entirely 
quieted, since, during the two generations and more 
which have subsequently elapsed, nothing has occur- 
red to verify them, though there have at times been 
disputes of considerable acrimony, and which became 
the badges of parties, respecting the limits of the au- 
thority of the federal and state governments. The 
eminently beneficial working of so singular a provi- 
sion is probably, as M. de Tocqueville remarks, in a 
great measure attributable to the peculiarity inherent 
in a court of justice acting as such — namely, that it 
does not declare the law eo nomine and in the abstract, 
but waits until a case between man and man is brought 



FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS. 327 

before it judicially, involving the point in dispute ; 
from which arises the happy effect that its declara- 
tions are not made in a very early stage of the con- 
troversy ; that much popular discussion usually pre- 
cedes them ; that the court decides after hearing the 
point fully argued on both sides by lawyers of repu- 
tation; decides only as much of the question at a time 
as is required by the case before it, and its decision, 
instead of being volunteered for political purposes, is 
drawn from it by the duty which it can not refuse to 
fulfill, of dispensing justice impartially between ad- 
verse litigants. Even these grounds of confidence 
would not have sufficed to produce the respectful sub- 
mission with which all authorities have yielded to the 
decisions of the Supreme Court on the interpretation 
of the Constitution, were it not that complete reliance 
has been felt, not only on the intellectual pre-emi- 
nence of the judges composing that exalted tribunal, 
but on their entire superiority over either private or 
sectional partialities. This reliance has been in the 
main justified; but there is nothing which more vi- 
tally imports the American people than to guard with 
the most watchful solicitude against every thing which 
has the remotest tendency to produce deterioration in 
the quality of this great national institution. The 
confidence on which depends the stability of federal 
institutions has been for the first time im.paired by 
the judgment declaring slavery to be of common right, 
and consequently lawful in the Territories while not 
3^et constituted as states, even against the will of a 
majority of their inhabitants. The main pillar of the 



828 FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS. 

American Constitution is scarcely strong enough to 
bear many more such shocks. 

The tribunals which act as umpires between the 
federal and the state governments naturally also de- 
cide all disputes between two states, or between a cit- 
izen of one state and the government of another. 
The usual remedies between nations, war and diplo- 
macy, being precluded by the federal union, it is nec- 
essary that a judicial remedy should supply their 
place. The Supreme Court of the federation dis- 
penses international law, and is the first great exam- 
ple of what is now one of the most prominent wants 
of civilized society, a real international tribunal. 

The powers of a federal government naturally ex- 
tend not only to peace and war, and all questions 
which arise between the country and foreign govern- 
ments, but to making any other arrangements which 
are, in the opinion of the states, necessary to their en- 
joyment of the full benefits of union. For example, 
it is a great advantage to them that their mutual 
commerce should be free, without the impediment of 
frontier duties and custom-houses. But this internal 
freedom can not exist if each state has the power of 
fixing the duties on interchange of commodities be- 
tween itself and foreign countries, since every foreign 
product let in by one state would be let into all the 
rest; and hence all custom duties and trade regula- 
tions in the United States are made or repealed by 
the federal government exclusively. Again, it is a 
great convenience to the states to have but one coin- 
age, and but one system of weights and measur@s, 



FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS. 329 

which can only be insured if the regulation of these 
matters is intrusted to the federal government. The 
certainty and celerity of post-office communication is 
impeded, and its expense increased, if a letter has to 
pass. through half a dozen sets of public officers, sub- 
ject to different supreme authorities : it is convenient, 
therefore, that all post-offices should be under the 
federal government; but on such questions the feel- 
ings of different communities are liable to be differ- 
ent. One of the American states, under the guidance 
of a man who has displayed powers as a speculative 
political thinker superior to any who has appeared in 
American politics since the authors of the " Federal- 
ist,"* claimed a veto for each state on the custom' laws 
of the federal Congress ; and that statesman, in a post- 
humous work of great ability, which has been printed 
and widely circulated by the Legislature of South 
Carolina, vindicated this pretension on the general 
principle of limiting the tyranny of the majority, and 
protecting minorities by admitting them to a substan- 
tial participation in political power. One of the most 
disputed topics in American politics during the early 
part of this century was whether the power of the 
federal government ought to extend, and whether by 
the Constitution it did extend, to making roads and 
canals at the cost of the Union. It is only in transac- 
tions with foreign powers that the authority of the 
federal government is of necessity complete. On ev- 
ery other subject the question depends on how close- 
ly the people in general wish to draw the federal tie; 

* Mr. Calhoun. 



330 FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS. 

what portion of their local freedom of action they are 
willing to surrender, in order to enjoy more fully the 
benefit of being one nation. 

Eespecting the fitting constitution of a federal gov- 
ernment within itselfj much needs not be said. It of 
course consists of a legislative branch and an execu- 
tive, and the constitution of each is amenable to the 
same principles as that of representative governments 
generally. As regards the mode of adapting these 
general principles to a federal government, the provi- 
sion of the American Constitution seems exceedingly 
judicious, that Congress- should consist of two houses, 
and that while one of them is constituted according 
to population, each state being entitled to representa- 
tives in the ratio of the number of its inhabitants, the 
other should represent not the citizens, but the state 
governments, and every state, whether large or small, 
should be represented in it by the same number of 
members. This provision precludes any undue pow- 
er from being exercised by the more powerful states 
over the rest, and guarantees the reserved rights of 
the state governments by making it impossible, as far 
as the mode of representation can prevent, that any 
measure should pass Congress unless approved not 
only by a majority of the citizens, but by a majority 
of the states. I have before adverted to the farther 
incidental advantage obtained of raising the standard 
of qualifications in one of the houses. Being nom- 
inated by select bodies, the Legislatxires of the vari- 
ous states, whose choice, for reasons already indicated, 
is more likely to fall on eminent men than any popu- 



FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS. 331 

lar election — who have not only the power of elect- 
inp- such, but a strong motive to do so, because the 
influence of their state in the general deliberations 
must be materially affected by the personal weight 
and abilities of its representatives — the Senate of 
the United States, thus chosen, has always contained 
nearly all the political men of established and high 
reputation in the Union ; while the Lower House of 
Congress has, in the opinion of competent observers, 
been generally as remarkable for the absence of con- 
spicuous personal merit, as the Upper House for its 
presence. 

When the conditions exist for the formation of ef- 
ficient and durable federal unions, the multiplication 
of such is always a benefit to the world. It has the 
same salutary effect as any other extension of the 
practice of co-operation, through which the weak, by 
uniting, can meet on equal terms with the strong. 
By diminishing the number of those pett}^ states which 
are not equal to their own defense, it weakens the 
temptations to an aggressive policy, whether working 
directly by arms, or through the prestige of superior 
power. It of course puts an end to war and diplo- 
matic quarrels, and usually also to restrictions on 
commerce, between the states composing the Union ; 
while, in reference to neighboring nations, the in- 
creased military strength conferred by it is of a kind 
to be almost exclusivel}^ available for defensive, 
scarcely at all for aggressive purposes. A federal 
government has not a sufficiently concentrated au- 
thority to conduct with much efficiency any war but 



332 FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS. 

one of self-defense, in whieli it can rely on the volun- 
tary co-operation of every citizen ; nor is there any 
thing very flattering to national vanity or ambition in 
acquiring, by a successful war, not subjects, nor even 
fellow-citizens, but only new, and perhaps troublesomd 
independent members of the confederation. The war- 
like proceedings of the Americans in Mexico was 
purely exceptional, having been carried on principal- 
ly by volunteers, under the influence of the migra- 
tory propensity which prompts individual Americans 
to possess themselves of unoccupied land, and stimu- 
lated, if by any public motive, not by that of national 
aggrandizement, but by the purely sectional purpose 
of extending slaverj^ There are few signs in the 
proceedings of Americans, nationally or individually, 
that the desire of territorial acquisition for their coun- 
try as such has any considerable power -over them. 
Their hankering after Cuba is, in the same manner, 
merely sectional, and the ISTorthern States, those op- 
posed to slavery, have never in any way favored it. 

The question may present itself (as in Italy at its 
present uprising) whether a country which is determ- 
ined to be united should form a complete or a merely 
federal union. The point is sometimes necessarily 
decided by the mere territorial magnitude of the uni- 
ted whole. There is a limit to the extent of country 
which can advantageously be governed, or even whose 
government can be conveniently superintended from 
a single centre. There are vast countries so govern- 
ed; but they, or at least their distant provinces, are 
in general deplorably ill administered, and it is only 



FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS. 838 

when the inhabitants are almost savages that they 
could not manage their affairs better separately. This 
obstacle does not exist in the case of Italy, the size of 
which does not come np to that of several very effi- 
ciently governed single states in past and present 
times. The question then is, whether the different 
parts of the nation require to be governed in a way 
so essentially different that it is not probable the same 
Legislature, and the same ministry or administrative 
body, will give satisfaction to them all. Unless this 
be the case, which is a question of fact, it is better for 
them to be completely united. That a totally differ- 
ent system of laws and very different administrative 
institutions may exist in two portions of a country 
without being any obstacle to legislative unity, is 
proved by the case of England and Scotland. Per- 
haps, however, this undisturbed coexistence of two 
legal systems under one united Legislature, making 
different laws for the two sections of the country in 
adaptation to the previous differences, might not be 
so well preserved, or the same confidence might not 
be felt in its preservation, in a country whose legisla- 
tors are more possessed (as is apt to be the case on 
the Continent) -with the mania for uniformity. A 
people having that unbounded toleration which is 
characteristic of this country for every description of 
anomaly, so long as those whose interests it concerns 
do not feel aggrieved by it, afforded an exceptionally 
advantageous field for trying this difficult experiment. 
In most countries, if it was an object to retain differ- 
ent systems .oflaw, it migkt probably be necessary to 



334 FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS. 

retain distinct Legislatures as guardians of them, 
which is perfectly compatible with a national Par- 
liament and king, or a national Parliament without a 
king, supreme over the external relations of all the 
members of the body. 

Whenever it is not deemed necessary to maintain 
permanently, in the different provinces, different sys- 
tems of jurisprudence, and fundamental institutions 
grounded on different principles, it is always practica- 
ble to reconcile minor diversities with the maintenance 
of unity of government. All that is needful is to give 
a sufficiently large sphere of action to the local author- 
ities. Under one and the same central government 
there may be local governors, and provincial asseni- 
blies for local purposes. It may happen, for instance, 
that the people of different provinces may have pref- 
erences in favor of different modes of taxation. If the 
general Legislature could not be depended on for be- 
ing guided by the members for each province in mod- 
ifying the general system of taxation to suit that prov- 
ince, the Constitution might provide that as many of 
the expenses of government as could by any possibil- 
ity be made local should be defrayed by local rates 
imposed by the provincial assemblies, and that those 
which must of necessity be general, such as the sup- 
port of an army and navy, should, in the estimates for 
the year, be apportioned among the different provinces 
according to some general estimate of their resources, 
the amount assigned to each being levied by the local 
assembly on the principles most acceptable to the lo- 
cality, and paid en Uoc into the national treasury. A 



FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS. 835 

practice approaching to this existed even in the old 
French monarch}^, so far as regarded the pays d^etais, 
each of which, having consented or being required to 
furnish a fixed sum, was left to assess it upon the in- 
habitants bj its own officers, thus escaping the grind- 
ing despotism of the royal intendants and suhdelegues ; 
and this privilege is always mentioned as one of the 
advantages which mainly contributed to render them, 
as they were, the most flourishing provinces of France. 
Identity of central government is compatible w^ith 
many diiferent degrees of centralization, not only-ad- 
ministrative, but even legislative. A people may have 
the desire and the capacity for a closer union than one 
merely federal, while yet their local peculiarities and 
antecedents render considerable diversities desirable 
in the details of their government. But if there is a 
real desire on all hands to make the experiment suc- 
cessful, there needs seldom be any difficulty in not only 
preserving those diversities, but giving them the guar- 
anty of a constitutional provision against any attempt 
at assimilation except by the voluntary act of those 
who would be affected by the change. 



336 GOVEENMKNT OF DEPENDENCIES 



CHAPTER XYIII. 

OF THE GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES BY A FREE 

STATE. 

Free states, like all others, may possess dependen- 
cies, acquired either by conquest or by colonization, 
raid our own is the greatest instance of the kind in 
modern history. It is a most important question how 
such dependencies ought to be governed. 

It is unnecessary to discuss the case of small posts, 
like Gribraltar, Aden, or Hehgoland, which are held 
only as naval or military positions. The military or 
naval object is in this case paramount, and the inhab- 
itants can not, consistently with it, be admitted to the 
government of the place, though they ought to be al- 
lowed all liberties and privileges compatible with that 
restriction, including the free management of munici- 
pal affairs, and, as a compensation for being locally 
sacrificed to the convenience of the governing state, 
should be admitted to equal rights with its native sub- 
jects in all other parts of the empire. 

Outlying territories of some size and population, 
which are held as dependencies, that is, which are sub- 
ject, more or less, to acts of sovereign power on the 
part of the paramount country, without being equally 
represented (if represented at all) in its Legislature, 
may be divided into two classes. Some are composed 



BY A FREE STATE. 337 

of people of similar civilization to the ruling country, 
capable of, and ripe for representative government, 
such as the British possessions in America and Aus- 
tralia. Others, like India, are still at a great distance 
from that state. 

In the case of dependencies of the former class, this 
country has at length realized, in rare completeness, 
the true principle of government. England has al- 
ways felt under a certain degree of obligation to be- 
stow on such of her outlying populations as were of 
her own blood and language, and on some who were 
not, representative institutions formed in imitation of 
her own ; but, until the present generation, she has 
been on the same bad level with other countries as 
to the amount of self-government which she allowed 
them to exercise through the representative institu- 
tions that she conceded to them. She claimed to be 
the supreme arbiter even of their purely internal con- 
cerns, according to her own, not their ideas of how 
those concerns could be best regulated. This practice 
was a natural corollary from the vicious theory of co- 
lonial policy — once common to all Europe, and not 
yet completely relinquished by any other people — 
which regarded colonies as valuable by affording mar- 
kets for our commodities that could be kept entirely 
to ourselves ; a privilege we valued so highly that we 
thought it worth purchasing by allowing to the colo- 
nies the same monopoly of our market for their own 
productions which we claimed for our commodities in 
theirs. This notable plan of enriching them and our- 
selves by making each pay enormous sums to the oth- 

P 



888 GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES 

er, dropping the greatest part by the way, has been for 
some time abandoned. But the bad habit of meddling 
in the internal government of the colonies did not at 
once die out when we relinquished the idea of mak- 
ing any profit by it. We continued to torment them, 
not for any benefit to ourselves, but for that of a sec- 
tion or faction among the colonists ; and this persist- 
ence in domineering cost us a Canadian rebellion be- 
fore we had the happy thought of giving it up. En- 
gland was like an ill brought-up elder brother, who 
persists in tyrannizing" over the younger ones from 
mere habit, till one of them, by a spirited resistance, 
though with unequal strength, gives him notice to de- 
sist. We were wise enough not to require a second 
warning. A new era in the colonial policy of nations 
began with Lord Durham's Report ; the imperishable 
memorial of that nobleman's courage, patriotism, and 
enlightened liberality, and of the intellect and practi- 
cal sagacity of its joint authors, Mr. Wakefield and the 
lamented Charles Buller.* 

It is now a fixed principle of the policy of Great 
Britain, professed in theory and faithfully adhered to 
in practice, that her colonies of European race, equal- 
ly with the parent country, possess the fullest measure 
of internal self-government. They have been allowed 
to make their own free representative constitutions by 
altering in any manner they thought fit the already 
very popular constitutions which we had given them. 

* I am speaking here of the adoption of this improved policy, not, 
of course, of its original suggestion. The honor of having been its 
earliest champion belongs unquestionably to Mr. Roebtick. 



BY A FREE STATE. 839 

Each is governed by its own Legislature and execu- 
tive, constituted on bigbly democratic principles. The 
veto of tbe crown and of Parliament, though nominal- 
ly reserved, is only exercised (and that very rarely) 
on questions which concern the empire, and not sole- 
ly the particular colony. How liberal a construction 
has been given to the distinction between imperial and 
colonial questions is shown by the fact that the whole 
of the unappropriated lands in the regions behind our 
American and Australian colonies have been given 
up to the uncontrolled disposal of the colonial com- 
munities, though they might, without injustice, have 
been kept in the hands of the imperial government, 
to be administered for the greatest advantage of fu- 
ture emigrants from all parts of the empire. Every 
colony has thus as full power over its own affairs as 
it could have if it were a member of even the loosest 
federation, and much fuller than would belong to it 
under the Constitution of the United States, being free 
even to tax at its pleasure the commodities imported 
from the mother country. Their union with Great 
Britain is the slightest kind of federal union ; but not a 
strictly equal federation, the mother country retaining 
to itself the powers of a federal government, though 
reduced in practice to their very narrowest limits. 
This inequality is, of course, as far as it goes, a disad- 
vantage to the dependencies, which have no voice in 
foreign policy, but are bound by the decisions of the 
superior country. They are compelled to join En- 
gland in war without being in any way consulted pre- 
vious to engaging in it. 



340 GOVERNMENT OP DEPENDENCIES 

Those (now happily not a few) who think that jus- 
tice is as binding on communities as it is on individu- 
als, and that men are not warranted in doing to other 
countries, for the supposed benefit of their own coun- 
try, what they would not be justified in doing to oth- 
er men for their own benefit, feel even this limited 
amount of constitutional subordination on the part of 
the colonies to be a violation of principle, and have 
often occupied themselves in looking out for means 
by which it may be avoided. With this view it has 
been proposed by some that the- colonies should re- 
turn representatives to the British Legislature, and by 
others that the powers of our own, as well as of their 
Parliaments, should be confined to internal policy, and 
that there should be another representative body for 
foreign and imperial concerns, in which last the de- 
pendencies of Great Britain should be represented in 
the same manner, and with the same completeness as 
Great Britain itself. On this system there would be 
a perfectly equal federation between the mother coun- 
try and her colonies, then no longer dependencies. 

The feelings of equity and conceptions of public 
morality from which these suggestions emanate are 
worthy of all praise, but the suggestions themselves 
are so inconsistent- with rational principles of govern- 
ment that it is doubtful if they have been seriously 
accepted as a possibility by any reasonable thinker. 
Countries separated by half the globe do not present 
the natural conditions for being under one govern- 
ment, or even members of one federation. If they 
had sufficiently the same interests, they have not, and 



BY A FREE STATE. 841 

never can have, a sufficient habit of taking council to- 
gether. Thej are not part of the same public; they 
do not discuss and deliberate in the same arena, but 
apart, and have only a most imperfect knowledge of 
what passes in the minds of one another. They nei- 
ther know each other's objects, nor have confidence 
in each other's principles of conduct. Let any En- 
glishman ask himself how h6 should like his destinies 
to depend on an assembly of which one third was 
British American, and another third South African 
and Australian. Yet to this it must come if there 
were any thing like fair or equal representation ; and 
would not every one feel that the representatives of 
Canada and Ajastralia, even in matters of an imperial 
character, could not know or feel any sufficient concern 
for the interests, opinions, or wishes of English, Irish, 
and Scotch? Even for strictly federative purposes 
the conditions do not exist which we have seen to be 
essential to a federation. England is sufficient for her 
own protection without the colonies, and would be in 
a much stronger, as well as more dignified position, if 
separated from them, than when reduced to be, a single 
member of an American, African, and Australian con- 
federation. Over and above the commerce which she 
might equalty enjoy after separation, England derives 
little advantage, except in prestige^ from her depend- 
encies, and the little she does derive is quite outweigh- 
ed by the expense they cost her, and the dissemina- 
tion they necessitate of her naval and military force, 
which, in case of war, or any real apprehension of it, 
requires to be double or treble what w^ould be needed 
for the defense of t>>i<3 or^^^r^^v■\T D.lone. 



342 GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES 

But, though Great Britain could do perfectly well 
without her colonies, and though, on every principle 
of morality and justice, she ought to consent to their 
separation, should the time come when, after full trial 
of the best form of union, they deliberately desire to 
be dissevered, there are strong reasons for maintain- 
ing the present slight bond of connection so long as 
not disagreeable to the feelings of either party. It is 
a step, as far as it goes, toward universal peace and 
general friendly co-operation among nations. It ren- 
ders war impossible among a large number of oth- 
erwise independent communities, and, moreover, hin- 
ders any of them from being absorbed into a foreign 
state, and becoming a source of additional aggressive 
strength to some rival power, either more despotic or 
closer at hand, which may not always be so unambi- 
tious or so pacific as Great Britain. It at least keeps 
the markets of the different countries open to one an- 
other, and prevents that mutual exclusion by hostile 
tariffs which none of the great communities of man- 
kind except England have yet outgrown. And in the 
case of the British possessions it has the advantage, 
specially valuable at the present time, of adding to 
the moral influence and weight in the councils of the 
world of the power which, of all in existence, best un- 
derstands liberty — and, whatever may have been its 
errors in the past, has attained to more of conscience 
and moral principle in its dealings with foreigners 
than any other great nation seems either to conceive 
as possible or recognize as desirable. Since, then, the 
union can only continue, while it does continue, on 



BY A FEEE STATE. 843 

the footing of an unequal federation, it is important 
to consider by what means this small amount of ine- 
quality can be prevented from being either onerous 
or humiliating to the communities occupying the less 
exalted position. 

The only inferiority necessarily inherent in the 
case is that the mother country decides, both for the 
colonies and for herself, on questions of peace and war. 
They gain, in return, the obligation on the mother 
country to repel aggressions directed against them; 
but, except when the minor community is so weak 
that the protection of a stronger power is indispensa- 
ble to it, reciprocity of obligation is not a full equiva- 
lent for non-admission to a voice in the deliberations. 
It is essential, therefore, that in all wars, save those 
which, like the Caffre or New Zealand wars, are in- 
curred for the sake of the»particular colony, the colo- 
nists should not (unless at their own voluntary re- 
quest) be made to contribute any thing to the expense 
except what may be required for the specific local de- 
fense of their own ports, shores, and frontiers against 
invasion. Moreover, as the mother country claims 
the privilege, at her sole discretion, of taking meas- 
ures or pursuing a policy which may expose them to 
attack, it is just that she should undertake a consid- 
erable portion of the cost of their military defense 
even in time of peace ; the whole of it, so far as it de- 
pends upon a standing army. 

But there is a means, still more effectual than these, 
by which, and in general by which alone, a full equiv- 
alent can be given to a smaller community for sink- 



344 GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES 

ing its individuality, as a substantive power among 
nations, in the greater individuality of a wide and 
powerful empire. This one indispensable, and, at the 
same time, sufficient expedient, whicli meets at once 
the demands of justice and the growing exigencies of 
policy, is to open the service of government in all its 
departments, and in every part of the empire, on per- 
fectly equal terms, to the inhabitants of the colonies. 
Why does no one ever hear a breath of disloyalty 
from the islands in the British. Channel? By race, 
religion, and geographical position they belong less to 
England than to France ; but, while they enjoy, like 
Canada and New South Wales, complete control over 
their internal affairs and their taxation, every office or 
dignity in the gift of the crown is freely open to the 
native of Guernsey or Jersey. Generals, admirals, 
peers of the United Kingelom are made, and there is 
nothing which hinders prime ministers to be made 
from those insignificant islands. The same system 
was commenced in reference to the colonies generally 
by an enlightened colonial secretarj^, too early lost. 
Sir William Molesworth, when he appointed Mr. 
Hinckes, a leading Canadian politician, to a West In- 
dian government. It is a very shallow view of the 
springs of political action in a community which 
thinks such things unimportant because the number 
of those in a position actually to profit by the conces- 
sion might not be very considerable. That limited 
number would be composed precisely of those who 
have most moral power over the rest ; and men are 
not so destitute of the sense of collective depjradation 



BY A FKEE STATE. 345 

as not to feel the withholding of an advantage from 
even one person, because of a circumstance which they 
all have in common with him, an affront to all. If we 
prevent the leading men of a community from stand- 
ing forth to the world as its chiefs and representatives 
in the general councils of mankind, we owe it both to 
their legitimate ambition and to the just pride of the 
community to give them in return an equal chance of 
occupying the same prominent position in a nation of 
greater power and importance. Were the whole serv- 
ice of the British crown opened to the natives of the 
Ionian Islands, we should hear no more of the desire 
for nnion with Greece. Such a union is not desirable 
for the people, to whom it would be a step backward 
in civilization ; but it is no wonder if Corfu, which 
has given a minister of European reputation to the 
Eussian Empire, and a president to Greece itself be- 
fore the arrival of the Bavarians, should feel it a 
grievance that its people are not admissible to the 
highest posts in some government or other. 

Thus far of the dependencies whose population is 
in a sufficiently advanced state to be fitted for repre- 
sentative government; but there are others which 
have not attained that state, and which, if held at all, 
must be governed by the dominant countrj^, or by 
persons delegated for that purpose by it. This mode 
of government is as legitimate as any other, if it is 
the on« which in the existing state of civihzatidn of 
the subject people most facilitates their transition to a 
higher stage of improvement. There are, as we have 
already seen, conditions of society in which a vigorous 

P2 



346 GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES 

despotism is in itself the best mode of government for 
training the people in what is specifically wanting to 
render them capable of a higher civilization. There 
are others in which the mere fact of despotism has 
indeed no beneficial effect, the lessons which it teaches 
having already been only too completely learned, but 
in which, there being no spring of spontaneous im- 
provement in the people themselves, their almost only 
hope of making any steps in advance depends on the 
chances of a good despot. Under a native despotism, 
a good despot is a rare and transitory accident ; but 
when the dominion they are under is that of a more 
civilized people, that people ought to be able to sup- 
ply it constantly. The ruling country ought to be 
able to do for its subjects all that could be done by a 
succession of absolute monarchs, guaranteed by irre- 
sistible force against the precariousness of tenure at- 
tendant on barbarous despotisms, and qualified by 
their genius to anticipate all that experience has 
taught to the more advanced nation. Such is the 
ideal rule of a free people over a barbarous or semi- 
barbarous one. We need not expect to see that ideal 
realized ; but, unless some approach to it is, the rulers 
are guilty of a dereliction of the highest moral trust 
which can devolve upon a nation ; and if they do not 
even aim at it, they are selfish usurpers, on a par in 
criminality with any of those whose ambition and ra- 
pacity have sported from age to age with the destiny 
of masses of mankind. 

As it is already a common, and is rapidly tending 
to become the universal condition of the more back- 



BY A FKEE STATE. 84:7 

ward populations to be either held in direct subjection 
by the more advanced, or to be under their complete 
political ascendency, there are in this age of the world 
few more important problems than how to organize 
this rule, so as to make it a good instead of an evil 
to the subject people, providing them with the best 
attainable present government, and with the condi- 
tions most favorable to future permanent improve- 
ment. But the mode of fitting the government for 
this purpose is by no means so well understood as the 
conditions of good government in a people capable of 
governing themselves. We may even say that it is 
not understood at all. 

The thing appears perfectly easy to superficial ob- 
servers. If India (for example) is not fit to govern 
itself, all that seems to them required is that there 
should be a minister to govern it, and that this min- 
ister, like all other British ministers, should be re- 
sponsible to the British Parliament. Unfortunately 
this, though the simplest mode of attempting to gov- 
ern a dependency, is about the worst, and betrays in 
its advocates a total want of comprehension of the 
conditions of good government. To govern a coun- 
try under responsibility to the people of that country, 
and to govern one country under responsibility to the 
people of another, are two very different things. What 
makes the excellence of the first is, that freedom is 
preferable to despotism ; but the last w despotism. 
The only choice the case admits is a choice of despot- 
isms, and it is not certain that the despotism of twen- 
ty millions is necessarily better than that of a few or 



348 GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES 

of one ; but it is quite certain that tlie despotism of 
those who neither hear, nor see, nor know any thing 
about their subjects has many chances of being w^orse 
than that of those who do. It is not usually thought 
that the immediate agents of authority govern better 
because they govern in the name of an absent master, 
and of one who has a thousand more pressing inter- 
ests to attend to. The master may hold them to a 
strict responsibility, enforced by heavy penalties, but 
it is very questionable if those penalties will often fall 
in the right place. 

It is always under great dif&culties, and very imper- 
fectly, that a country can be governed by foreigners, 
even when there is no extreme disparity in habits and 
ideas between the rulers and the ruled. Foreigners 
do not feel with the people. They can not judge, by 
the light in which a thing appears to their own minds, 
or the manner in which it affects their feelings, how 
it will affect the feelings or appear to the minds of the 
subject population. What a native of the country, 
of average practical ability, knows as it were by in- 
stinct, they have to learn slowly, and, after all, imper- 
fectly, by study and experience. The laws, the cus- 
toms, the social relations for which they have to leg- 
islate, instead of being familiar to them from child- 
hood, are all strange to them. For most of their de- 
tailed knowledge they must depend on the informa- 
tion of natives, and it is difficult for them to know 
whom to trust. They are feared, suspected, probably 
disliked by the population; seldom -sought by them 
except for interested purposes ; and they are prone to 



BY A FKEE STATE. 349 

think that the servilely submissive are the trustwor- 
thy. Their danger is of despising the natives; that 
of the natives is, of disbelieving that any thing the 
strangers do can be intended for their good. These 
are but a part of the difiicuities that any rulers have 
to struggle with, who honestly attempt to govern well 
a country in which they are foreigners. To overcome 
these difficulties in any degree will always be a work 
of much labor, requiring a very superior degree of ca- 
pacity in the chief administrators, and a high average 
among the subordinates; and the best organization 
of such a government is that which will best insure 
the labor, develop the capacity, and place the highest 
specimens of it in the situations of greatest trust. Re- 
sponsibility to an authority which has gone through 
none of the labor, acquired none of the capacity, and 
for the most part is not even aware that either, in any 
peculiar degree, is required, can not be regarded as a 
very eflPectual expedient for accomplishing these ends. 
The government of a people by itself has a mean- 
ing and a reality, but such a thing as government of 
one people by another does not and can not exist. 
One people may keep another as a warren or preserve 
for its own use, a place to make money in, a human 
cattle-farm to be worked for the profit of its own in- 
habitants; but if the good of the governed is the 
proper business of a government, it is utterly impos- 
sible that a people should directly attend to it. The 
utmost they can do is to give some of their best men 
a commission to look after it, to whom the opinion of 
their own country can neither be much of a guide in 



850 GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES 

the performance of their dut}^, nor a competent judge 
of the mode in which it has been performed. Let 
any one consider how the English themselves would 
be governed if they knew and cared no more about 
their own affairs than they know and care about the 
affairs of the Hindoos. Even this comparison gives 
no adequate idea of the state of the case ; for a people 
thus indifferent to politics altogether would probably 
be simply acquiescent, and let the government alone ; 
whereas in the case of India, a politically active peo- 
ple like the English, amid habitual acquiescence, are 
every now^ and then interfering, and almost alwaj^s in 
the wrong place. The real causes wdnch determine 
the prosperity or wretchedness, the improvement or 
deterioration of the Hindoos, are too far off to be 
wdthin their ken. They have not the knowledge nec- 
essary for suspecting the existence of those causes, 
much less for judging of their operation. The most 
essential interests of the country may be w^ell ad- 
ministered without obtaining any of their approba- 
tion, or mismanaged to almost any excess without at- 
tracting their notice. The purposes for which they 
are principally tempted to interfere, and control the 
proceedings of their delegates, are of two kinds. One 
is, to force English ideas down the throats of the na- 
tives ; for instance, by measures of proselytism, or acts 
intentionally or unintentionally offensive to the relig- 
ious feelings of the people. This misdirection of opin- 
ion in the ruling country is instructively exemplified 
(the more so, because nothing is meant but justice and 
fairness, and as much impartiality as can be expected 



BY A FREE STATE. 351 

from persons really convinced) by the demand now so 
general in England for having the Bible taught, at 
the option of pupils or their parents, in the govern- 
ment schools. From the European point of view 
nothing can wear a fairer aspect, or seem less open to 
objection on the score of religious freedom. To Asi- 
atic eyes it is quite another thing. No Asiatic peo- 
ple ever believes that a government puts its paid offi- 
cers and official machinery into motion unless it is 
bent upon an object; and when bent on an object, no 
Asiatic believes that any government, except a feeble 
and contemptible one, pursues it by halves. If gov- 
ernment schools and schoolmasters taught Christian- 
ity, whatever pledges might be given of teaching it 
only to those who spontaneousl}^ sought it, no amount 
of evidence would ever persuade the parents that im- 
proper means were not used to make their children 
Christians, or, at all events, outcasts from Hindooism. 
If they could, in the end, be convinced of the contrary, 
it would only be by the entire failure of the schools, 
so conducted, to make any converts. If the teaching 
had the smallest effect in promoting its object, it would 
compromise not only the utility and even existence 
of the government education, but perhaps the safety 
of the government itself An English Protestant 
would not be easil}- induced, by disclaimers of prose- 
lytism, to place his children in a Eoman Catholic sem- 
inary ; Irish Catholics will not send their children to 
schools in which they can be made Protestants ; and 
we expect that Hindoos, who believe that the privi- 
leges of Hindooism can be forfeited by a merely phys- 



352 GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES 

ical act, will expose theirs to the danger of being made 
Christians ! 

Such is one of the modes in which the opinion of 
the dominant country tends to act more injuriously 
than beneficially on the conduct of its deputed gov- 
ernors. In other respects, its interference is likely to 
be oftenest exercised where it will be most pertina- 
ciously demanded, and that is, on behalf of some in- 
terest of the English settlers. English settlers have 
friends at home, have organs, have access to the pub- 
lic ; they have a common language, and common ideas 
with, their countrymen ; any complaint by an English- 
man is more sympathetically heard, even if no unjust 
preference is intentionally accorded to it. Now if 
there be a fact to which all experience testifies, it is 
that, when a country holds another in subjection, the 
individuals of the ruling people who resort to the for- 
eign country to make their fortunes are of all others 
those who most need to be held under powerful re- 
straint. They are always one of the chief difficulties 
of the government. Armed with the prestige and 
filled with the scornful overbearingness of the con- 
quering nation, they have the feelings inspired by 
absolute power without its sense of responsibility. 
Among a people like that of India, the utmost efforts 
of the public authorities are not enough for the effect- 
ual protection of the weak against the strong; and 
of all the strong, the European settlers are the stron- 
gest. Wherever the demoralizing effect of the situa- 
tion is not in a most remarkable degree corrected by 
the personal character of the individual, they think 



BY A FREE STATE. ^ 358 

the people of the country mere dirt under their feet : 
it seems to them monstrous that any rights of the na- 
tives should stand in the way of their smallest pre- 
tensions; the simplest act of protection to the inhab- 
itants against any act of power on their part which 
they may consider useful to their commercial objects 
they denounce, and sincerely regard as an injury. 
So natural is this state of feeling in a situation like 
theirs, that, even under the discouragement which it 
has hitherto met with from the ruling authorities, it 
is impossible that more or less of the spirit should not 
perpetually break out. The government, itself free 
from this spirit, is never able sufficiently to keep it 
do^^^ in the young and raw even of its own civil and 
military officers, over whom it has so much more con- 
trol than over the independent residents. As it is 
with the English in India, so, according to trustworthy 
testimony, it is with the French in Algiers; so with 
the Americans in the countries conquered from Mex- 
ico ; so it seems to be with the Europeans in China, 
and already even in Japan : there is no necessity to 
recall how it was with the Spaniards in South Amer- 
ica. In all these cases, the government to which these 
private adventurers are subject is better than they, 
and does the most it can to protect the natives against 
them. Even the Spanish government did this, sin- 
cerely and earnestly, though ineffectually, as is known 
to every reader of Mr. Helps' instructive history. 
Had the Spanish government been directl}^ accounta- 
ble to Spanish opinion, we may question if it would 
have made the attempt, for the Spaniards, doubtless, 



354 GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES 

would have taken part with their Christian friends 
and relations rather than with pagans. The settlers, 
not the natives, have the ear of the public at home ; 
it is they whose representations are likely to pass for 
truth, because they alone have both the means and 
the motive to press them perseveringly upon the in- 
attentive and uninterested public mind. The dis- 
trustful criticism with which Englishmen, more than 
any other people, are in the habit of scanning the con- 
duct of their country toward foreigners, they usually 
reserve for the proceedings of the public authorities. 
In all questions between a government and an indi- 
vidual, the presumption in every Englishman's mind 
is that the government is in the wrong. And j^hen 
the resident English bring the batteries of English 
political action to bear upon any of the bulwarks 
erected to protect the natives against their encroach- 
ments, the executive, with their real but faint vellei- 
ties of something better, generally find it safer to their 
Parliamentary interest, and, at any rate, less trouble- 
some, to give up the disputed position than to de- 
fend it. 

What makes matters worse is that, when the public 
mind is invoked (as, to its credit, the English mind is 
extremely open to be) in the name of justice and phi- 
lanthropy in behalf of the subject community or race, 
there is the same probability of its missing the mark ; 
for in the subject community also there are oppress- 
ors and oppressed — powerful individuals or classes, 
and slaves prostrate before them ; and it is the for- 
mer, not the latter, who have the means of access to 



BY A FREE STATE. 855 

the English public. A tjrant or sensualist who has 
been deprived of the power he had abused, and, in- 
stead of punishment, is supported in as great wealth 
and splendor as he ever enjoyed ; a knot of privi- 
leged landholders, who demand that the state should 
relinquish to them its reserved right to a rent from 
their lands, or who resent as a wrong any attempt to 
protect the masses from their extortion — these have 
no difficulty in procuring interested or sentimental 
advocacy in the British Parliament and press. The 
silent myriads obtain none. 

The preceding observations exemplify the operation 
of a principle — which might be called an obvious one, 
were it not that scarcely any body seems to be aware 
of it — that, while responsibility to the governed is the 
greatest of all securities for good government, respon- 
sibility to somebody else not only has no such tend- 
ency, but is as likely to produce evil as good. The 
responsibility of the British rulers of India to the 
British nation is chiefly useful because, when any acts 
of the government are called in question, it insures 
publicity and discussion ; the utility of which does 
not require that the public at large should compre- 
hend the point at issue, provided there are any indi- 
viduals among them who do ; for a merely moral re- 
sponsibility not being responsibility to the collective 
people, but to every separate person among them who 
forms a judgment, opinions may be weighed as well 
as counted, and the approbation or disapprobation of 
one person well versed in the subject may outweigh 
that of t^usands who know nothing about it at all. 



856 GOVEENMENT OF DEPENDENCIES 

It is doubtless a useful restraint upon the immediate 
rulers that thej can be put upon their defense, and 
that one or two of the jury will form an opinion worth 
having about their conduct, though that of the re- 
mainder will probably be several degrees worse than 
none. Such as it is, this is the amount of benefit to 
India from the control exercised over the Indian gov- 
ernment by the British Parliament and people. 

It is not by attempting to rule directly a country 
like India, but by giving it good rulers, that the En- 
glish people can do their duty to that country ; and 
they can scarcely give it a worse one than an English 
cabinet minister, who is thinking of English, not In- 
dian politics; who does not remain long enough in 
offiice to acquire an intelligent interest in so compli- 
cated a subject ; upon whom the factitious public 
opinion got up in Parliament, consisting of two or 
three fluent speakers, acts with as much force as if it 
were genuine; while he is under none of the influ- 
ences of training and position which would lead or 
qualify him to form an honest opinion of his own. A 
free country which attempts to govern a distant de- 
pendency, inhabited by a dissimilar people, by means 
of a branch of its own executive, will almost inevi- 
tably fail. The only mode which has any chance of 
tolerable success is to govern through a delegated 
body of a comparatively permanent character, allow- 
ing only a right of inspection and a negative voice to 
the changeable administration of the state. Such a 
body did exist in the case of India; and I fear that 
both India and England will pay a severe ^fcialty for 



BY A FREE STATE. 357 

the shortsighted policy by which this intermediate in- 
strument of government was done awaj^ with. 

It is of no avail to say that such a delegated body 
can not have all the requisites of good government ; 
above all, can not have that complete and over-opera- 
tive identity of interest with the governed which it is 
so difficult to obtain even where the people to be ruled 
are in some degree qualified to look after their own 
affairs. Eeal good government is not compatible with 
the conditions of the case. There is but a choice of 
imperfections. The pi'oblem is, so to construct the 
governing body that, under the difficulties of the po- 
sition, it shall have as much interest as possible in 
good government, and as little in bad. ISTow these 
conditions are best found in an intermediate body. A 
delegated administration has always this advantage 
over a direct one, that it has, at all events, no duties 
to perform except to the governed. It has no inter- 
ests to consider except theirs. Its own power of de- 
riving profit from misgovernment may be reduced — 
in the latest Constitution of the East India Company 
it was reduced — to a singularly small amount ; and it 
can be kept entirely clear of bias from the individual 
or class interests of any one else. When the home 
government and Parliament are swayed by such par- 
tial influences in the exercise of the power reserved 
to them in the last resort, the intermediate body is the 
certain advocate and champion of the dependency be- 
fore the imperial tribunal. The intermediate body, 
moreover, is, in the natural course of things, chiefly 
composed of persons who have acquired professional 



858 GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES 

knowledge of this part of their country's concerns ; 
who have been trained to it in the place itself, and 
have made its administration the main occupation of 
their lives. Furnished with these qualifications, and 
not being liable to lose their office from the accidents 
of home politics, they identify their character and con- 
sideration with their special trust, and have a much 
more permanent interest in the success of their ad- 
ministration, and in the prosperity of the country 
which they administer, than a member of a cabinet 
under a representative constitution can possibly have 
in the good government of any country except the 
one which he serves. So far as the choice of those 
who carry on the management on the spot devolves 
upon this body, their appointment is kept out of the 
vortex of party and Parliamentary jobbing, and freed 
from the influence of those motives to the abuse of 
patronage for the reward of adherents, or to buy off 
those who would otherwise be opponents, which are 
always stronger with statesmen of average honesty 
than a conscientious sense of the duty of appointing 
the fittest man. To put this one class of appointments 
as far as possible out of harm's way is of more conse- 
quence than the worst which can happen to all other 
offices in the state ; for, in every other department, if 
the officer is unqualified, the general opinion of the 
community directs him in a certain degree what to 
do ; but in the position of the administrators of a de- 
pendency where the people are not fit to have the 
control in their own hands, the character of the gov- 
ernment entirely depends on the qualifications, moral 
and intellectual, of the individual functi5"naries. 



BY A FREE STATE. 359 

It can not be too often repeated tbat, in a country 
like India, every thing depends on the personal qual- 
ities and capacities of the agents of government. 
This truth is the cardinal principle of Indian admin- 
istration. The day when it comes to be thought that 
the appointment of persons to situations of trust from 
motives of convenience, already so criminal in En- 
gland, can be practiced with impunity in India, will 
be the beginning of the decline and fall of our em- 
pire there. Even with a sincere intention of prefer- 
ring the best candidate, it will not do to rely on 
chance for supplying fit persons. The system must 
be calculated to form them. It has done this hither- 
to ; and because it has done so, our rule in India has 
lasted, and been one of constant, if not very rapid 
improvement in prosperity and good administration. 
As much bitterness is now manifested against this 
system, and as much eagerness displayed to over- 
throw it, as if educating and training the officers of 
government for their work were a thing utterly un- 
reasonable and indefensible, an unjustifiable inter- 
ference with the rights of ignorance and inexperience. 
There is a tacit conspiracy between those who would 
like to job in first-rate Indian offices for their con- 
nections here, and those who, being already in India, 
claim to be promoted from the indigo factory or the 
attorney's office to administer justice or fix the pay- 
ments due to government from millions of people. 
The "monopoly" of the civil service, so much in- 
veighed against, is like the monopoly of judicial of- 
fices by the bar ; and its abolition would be like open- 



860 GOVEENMENT OF DEPENDENCIES 

ing tlie bench in Westminster Hall to the first comer 
whose friends certify that be has now and then look- 
ed into Blackstone. Were the course ever adopted 
of sending men from this countrj^, or encouraging 
them in going out, to get themselves put into high 
appointments without having learned their business 
bj passing through the lower ones, the most important 
offices would be thrown to Scotch cousins and adven- 
turers, connected by no professional feeling with the 
country or the work, held to no previous knowledge, 
11 nd eager only to make money rapidly and return 
liorae. The safety of the country is, that those by 
vv^hom it is administered are sent out in youth, as can- 
didates only, to begin at the bottom of the ladder, and 
ascend higher or not, as, after a proper interval, they 
are proved qualified. The defect of the East India 
Company's system was that, though the best men 
were carefully sought out for the most important 
posts, yet, if an officer remained in the service, pro- 
motion, though it might be delayed, came at last in 
some shape or other, to the least as well as to the most 
competent. Even the inferior in qualifications among 
such a corps of functionaries consisted, it must be re- 
membered, of men who had been brought up to their 
duties, and had fulfilled them for many years, at low- 
est without disgrace, under the eye and authority of 
a superior. But, though this diminished the evil, it 
was nevertheless considerable. A man who never 
becomes fit for more than an assistant's duty should 
remain an assistant all his life, and his juniors should 
be promoted over him. With this exception, I am 



BY A FREE STATE. 861 

not aware of any real defect in the old system of In- 
dian appointments. It had already received the great- 
est other improvement it was susceptible of, the choice 
of the original candidates by competitive examina- 
tion, which, besides the advantage of recruiting from 
a higher grade of industry and capacity, has the rec- 
ommendation that under it, unless by accident, there 
are no personal ties between the candidates for of- 
fices and those who have a voice in conferring them. 
It is in no way unjust that public officers thus se- 
lected and trained should be exclusively eligible to 
offices which require specially Indian knowledge and 
experience. If any door to the higher appointments, 
without passing through the lower, be opened even 
for occasional use, there will be such incessant knock- 
ing at it by persons of influence that it will be impos- 
sible ever to keep it closed. The only excepted ap- 
pointment should be the highest one of all. The 
Viceroy of British India should be a person selected 
from all Englishmen for his great general capacity for 
government. If he have this, he will be able to dis- 
tinguish in others, and turn to his own use, that spe- 
cial knowledge and judgment in local affairs which 
he has not himself had the opportunity of acquiring. 
There are good reasons why the viceroy should not 
be a member of the regular service. All services 
have, more or less, their class prejudices, from which 
the supreme ruler ought to be exempt. Neither are 
men, however able and experienced, who have passed 
their lives in Asia, so likely to possess the most ad- 
vanced European ideas in general statesmanship, which 

Q 



362 GOVEKNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES 

the chief ruler should carry out with him, and blend 
with the results of Indian experience. Again, being 
of a different class, and especially if chosen by a dif- 
ferent authority, he will seldom have any personal 
partialities to warp his appointments to office. This 
great security for honest bestowal of patronage exist- 
ed in rare perfection under the mixed government of 
the crown and the East India Company. The su- 
preme dispensers of office — the governor general and 
governors — were appointed, in fact though not formal- 
ly, by the crown, that is, by the general government, 
not by the intermediate body, and a great officer of the 
crown probably had not a single personal or political 
connection in the local service, while the delegated 
body, most of whom had themselves served in the 
country, had, and were likely to have, such connec- 
tions. This guaranty for impartiality would be much 
impaired if the civil servants of government, even 
though sent out in boyhood as mere candidates for 
employment, should come to be furnished, in any con- 
siderable proportion, by the class of society which 
supplies viceroys and governors. Even the initiato- 
ry competitive examination would then be an insuffi- 
cient security. It would exclude mere ignorance and 
incapacity ; it would compel youths of family to start 
in the race with the same amount of instruction and 
ability as other people; the stupidest son could not 
be put into the Indian service, as he can be into the 
Church ; but there would be nothing to prevent un- 
due preference afterward. No longer, all equally un- 
known and unheard of by the arbiter of their lot, a 



BY A FREE STATE. 363 

portion of the service would be personally, and a still 
greater number politicall}^, in close relation with him. 
Members of certain families, and of the higher classes 
and influential connections generally, would rise more 
rapidly than their competitors, and be often kept in 
situations for which they were unfit, or placed in those 
for which others were fitter. The same influences 
would be brought into play which affect promotions 
in the army ; and those alone, if such miracles of sim- 
plicity there be, who believe that these are impartial, 
would expect impartiality in those of India. This 
evil is, I fear, irremediable by any general m-easures 
which can be taken under the present system. No 
such will afford a degree of security comparable to 
that which once flowed spontaneously from the so- 
called double government. 

What is accounted so great an advantage in the 
case of the English S3^stem of government at home 
-has been its misfortune in India — that it grew up of 
itself, not from preconceived design, but by successive 
expedients, and by the adaptation of machinery orig- 
inally created for a different purpose. As the coun- 
try on which its maintenance depended was not the 
one out of whose necessities it grew, its practical ben- 
efits did not come home to the mind of that country, 
and it would have required theoretic recommendations 
to render it acceptable. Unfortunate^, these were 
exactly what it seemed to be destitute of; and un- 
doubtedly the common theories of government did 
not furnish it with such, framed as those theories have 
been for states of circumstances differinof in all the 



864 GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES 

most important features from tiie case concerned. But 
in government as in other departments of human 
agency, ahnost all principles which have been dura- 
ble were first suggested by observation of some par- 
ticular case, in which the general laws of nature acted 
in some new or previously unnoticed combination of 
circumstances. The institutions of Great Britain, and 
those of the United States, have had the distinction of 
suggesting most of the theories of government which, 
through good and evil fortune, are now, in the course 
of generations, reawakening political life in the na- 
tions of Europe. It has been the destiny of the gov- 
ernment of the East India Company to suggest the 
true theory of the government of a semi-barbarous 
dependency by a civilized country, and after having 
done this, to perish. It would be a singular fortune 
if, at the end of two or three more generations, this 
speculative result should be the only remaining fruit 
of our ascendency in India ; if posterity should say 
of us that, having stumbled accidentally upon better 
arrangements than our wisdom would ever have de- 
vised, the first use we made of our awakened reason 
was to destroy them, and allow the good which had 
been in course of being realized to fall through and 
be lost from ignorance of the principles on which it 
depended. Di meliora ; but if a fate so disgraceful to 
England and to civilization can be averted, it must be 
through far wider political conceptions than merely 
English or European practice can supply, and through 
a much more profound study of Indian experience 
and of the conditions of Indian government than ei- 



BY A FREE STATE. 



865 



ther English politicians, or those who supply the En- 
glish public with opinions, have hitherto shown anj 
willingness to undertake. 



THE END. 



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